Bid My Soul Farewell

by Beth Revis

  I touched the side of one of the buildings. I imagined the enormous wall that protected the city rising up and encircling just me, trapping me in silence, away from the chaos.

  I walked east. I figured the collector’s business might be hard to find, but a municipal hall should at least be well labeled. I stopped in front of a stoic-looking rectangular building with wide front steps and high windows carved into the yellow limestone. A placard had been engraved into the stone of this building—Church hall of Orious, it claimed, using the old spelling for “Oryous” and giving a date six centuries ago.

  I sucked in my breath, staring up at the ancient building. Nothing on Lunar Island was older than two centuries—the colony hadn’t existed before that time. But Miraband had been the capital since before there was an Empire. Allyria had originally been just a smaller nation within the larger continent, and it wasn’t until the last few centuries that it truly expanded, claiming the outlying city-states first, then, more recently, the nations of Siber and Enja. Then more, past the borders of the mainland. Across the ocean, not just with Lunar Island, but other island nations, reaching deep into the Azure Sea, knocking at the doors of the kingdoms on the other side of the world.

  But this plain stone church hall . . . it had been here before the Empire. When Miraband was a city-state, with an Elder instead of an Emperor. When the god Orious had only entered the pantheon, and the people were still choosing who to worship, and how, and why.

  “Would you like to come in?” a kind voice asked from the street. An older woman mounted the steps, a ring of keys in her hand. She wore a simple black robe, the only color on her body a bright red pallium embroidered with golden thread that formed runes common in the sacred Oryon texts. The Elders of my village church hall didn’t wear palliums outside of important holy days, and I wondered if Miraband’s Elders were required to wear formal dress on every visit to the church.

  “All are welcome,” the woman said again. “You can rest awhile.” She nodded to the copper crucible on my shoulder, heavy enough to be a burden even though it appeared empty to her.

  “Thank you, Elder,” I replied, a hint of a question in my voice. She nodded at me, confirming my suspicion that she was in the holy order, and swept her arm up, inviting me into the church hall.

  I didn’t have time to visit, but something compelled me to linger there. My hand went unconsciously to my throat. I used to wear a cord with three knots in it, reflective of the three stars in the Oryous constellation and symbolic of his eye watching over the past, present, and future. But I’d replaced it with the chain I wore to hold my iron crucible.

  The Elder removed her robe once inside. On her left forearm, right in the middle between her wrist and her elbow, there was a dimple in her flesh, a cavern deep enough that I was certain if I pressed my fingers into it, I would be able to feel her bone.

  She noticed me looking.

  “A fleshbane spider bite,” she said. “They’re common in the desert lands, where I did my missionary work.”

  I nodded, then shifted my shirtsleeve, showing my own scars at the end of my residual limb. The Elder gave me a little smile of shared sympathy.

  I moved around the old church hall, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman’s spider bite and the way it had healed. It was an ugly scar. The fleshbane spider’s venom caused necrosis, eating away the victim’s skin and muscle. I’d seen information about it in my medical texts at Yūgen. The only way to save the person’s life was to cut out the flesh, removing an entire chunk of the person’s body and hoping it would heal around the hole.

  That’s what I couldn’t make Grey understand. Grief was like a fleshbane spider bite. It caused a wound that tore a chunk out of you. Grey seemed to think that mourning was like healing from a razor slicing through skin—it hurt, but it would heal, leaving nothing but a faint scar. But really, grief left a hole in you, and while you healed around the hole, you never didn’t have it. A piece of you was gone. You couldn’t heal something that wasn’t there. Just as the Elder’s arm would never be whole—just as my arm would never be whole—neither would the parts inside of me that missed my family. Surviving grief was as simple and difficult as healing around the hole, reshaping your life around what was gone.

  I forced myself to take in the architecture of the church hall, driving these thoughts away from my mind. Slit windows were cut into the wall near the roof of the building, sending crisscrossed beams of light into the wide space of the church hall. The Elder’s confident steps over the mosaic floor were nearly silent. The only other source of illumination came from the narrow shelves of candles under the large round window set high on the opposite wall. The Oryous eye window had the same diameter of a tree trunk, the stained glass arranged in a myriad of reds, yellows, and oranges with no clear pattern, but it cast sparkling spots of colored light all along the floor.

  The frescoes that lined the walls were faded to near invisibility. Squinting in the dim light, I examined the art. The triumphant figure in the foreground was Oryous, and I suspected the sunbeams surrounding him had been gilded with real gold, one of the only parts of the fresco that hadn’t faded, although the gilding was tarnished and dull.

  “The Conquering of Death,” the Elder said reverently. “The title,” she added when I gaped at her. Death seemed to follow me everywhere.

  I turned back to the fresco. I had at first been distracted by the gilded beams of light, but when I looked down, I noticed that Oryous’s bare feet were curled over a pair of skulls. In fact, the entire bottom of the painting was cluttered with images of bones.

  “Today, Death is his own god,” the Elder said. “This scene from the sacred texts is often painted with Oryous fighting a black-robed figure, or some such nonsense.”

  I thought of the chapel at Yūgen—the billowing robes of Oryous and the strong figure of Death before him.

  “But when our religion first formed, there was no god of death.” The Elder laughed. “We have to personify everything to understand it, it seems. But no—conquering death meant reaching the afterlife, not a literal battle. Death is not a god. Death is a place.”

  I bit my tongue. She may have thought Death was not a real god, but I had seen it. Felt it. My hand wrapped around my iron crucible, the icy-hot feel of it burning my skin.

  I stared at the fresco, wondering if the gods had truly changed over time, or if I simply had. Oryous would not have wanted me to keep the dead for my own when he would claim them for himself. But perhaps no god had granted me this power; perhaps I had just taken it.

  “We still have services here,” the Elder said, turning to me. There was an air to her voice I hadn’t detected before, a little like desperation and a little like hope. “You’re welcome to come and worship whenever you like.”

  “I’m just visiting.”

  “Oh.” The Elder tried to mask her disappointment. Her eyes dropped to the copper crucible I carried, but she asked no questions.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m hoping you can help me. I’m looking for the old municipal building?”

  “Oh, are you an art lover?” the Elder said.

  “No—I—why?”

  “I just assumed,” the Elder said. “The old municipal building is far newer than this church hall—only a few centuries old in fact. The mosaic on the wall echoes this fresco,” she added when I still looked confused. “Although the material it’s made out of . . .”

  “Could you tell me where it is?” I asked.

  As she rattled off directions, I was relieved to find that I was close. I dropped a handful of Grey’s coins into the charity box by the door, and when their clinking sounds made me think the box was otherwise empty, I slipped in a few more—three copper coins from my own pocket. The Elder had advised a shortcut around the back of the church hall, so I did not return to the road by the wall and instead headed into the shadows of the old building
s.

  I almost missed the municipal building. In fact, if the Elder hadn’t told me about the mosaic, I would have walked right past it.

  I had been expecting a mosaic made of tile and glass, glittering in the sun. The mosaic on the municipal building, however, was dull. The faded taupe stone used to make the art was nearly the same color as the heavy blocks of limestone the building was made of; only the gray grout really made the illustration stand out. I wondered if, when the mosaic had been made centuries ago, it had been brightly painted.

  I turned my back to the building, scanning the area for a street sign that would point me to the collector’s place. The municipal building’s front steps spilled out to a wide sidewalk that formed a small square. A park—some mostly bare trees and a pair of weather-worn benches—was in the center. All the streets ended at the square, except two that met in a point that pierced the park with a triangular-shaped building.

  An all-too-familiar man caught my attention. A flash of red coat against the dusty green park—the ship’s captain. I was instantly suspicious that he’d been following me, but he seemed to have come from a different direction. I froze, my entire body poised to flee, although I had every right to be here.

  The captain cut through the square. Even if he wasn’t following me, I had no particular desire to be seen now, so I turned my back to him, strolling up the stairs of the municipal building as if that was exactly where I’d intended to go. Too late I realized how foolish this was; it was far more likely that the captain had intended to come here, for official business, rather than to spy on me. Besides, the huge copper crucible I carried was sure to give me away even if he didn’t see my face. When I reached the top of the stairs, I dared a glance behind me.

  The captain was gone.

  I shook myself, almost laughing at the absurdity of running into him in Miraband. I was wound too tightly. I had just not expected to see a familiar face in a city of strangers.

  There was a plaque by the door of the municipal building, and I leaned in closer to see it better. All thoughts of the captain fled my mind. Because here, too, was a face I recognized.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Nedra

  EMPEROR AURELLIOUS.

  I didn’t know all the emperors—history wasn’t my favorite subject—but every child of Lunar Island knew Aurellious.

  This was the emperor against whom Wellebourne had raised an army of the undead. I could not escape his legacy even here.

  Emperor Aurellious defeated Wellebourne in the end, although Wellebourne came closer than any other man in history to destroying the Empire. From the date on the plaque, it was still in the glow of Wellebourne’s hanging that Aurellious had commissioned this mosaic.

  Squinting up at it now, I could make out the rough design carved into the dull material. Whatever these bits of pale stone were, surely colored glass would have been cheaper and prettier.

  I was close enough now that I could touch the porous material. I reached for it with my right arm, my fingers bumping along the rough, broken bits. I had been a medical student at Yūgen for a year; I had studied skeletons. I recognized the material in the mosaic.

  Bone.

  With a calm I didn’t know I had, I touched a piece with my left arm, the one made of shadow. It felt . . . familiar. It reminded me of how it felt to touch my revenants, but something was missing. The sense was faint, but undeniable. This was human bone.

  With new understanding, I gazed up. These bones were old—two centuries old. They had been crushed to bits and carefully arranged on the wall to shape the figure of an emperor who stood in the triumphant pose of a god.

  There was no golden light clinging to these old bones—the souls of the dead were long gone, the life bleached out of them like the marrow that had dried up under the sun. But even if the souls were freed, it was still disgusting to see the bones of the dead so disrespected.

  And for what? The mosaic was barely recognizable now, just the outline of an emperor, himself long dead.

  Remembering the fresco of Oryous and how he stood upon skulls, my eyes drifted down to the ground. Sure enough, I could see the outline of Emperor Aurellious’s feet, and, scuffed from years of wear, the rounded outlines of rows of human skulls created a base for the emperor to stand upon.

  I knelt down, touching the skulls with my shadow hand. They were varying sizes—one small enough to be a child’s. These were people, not wall decorations.

  It was one thing for a god to stand atop death, triumphant. It was a totally different thing for a man to, even if he was the emperor.

  I could see why Wellebourne had wanted to overthrow him. Emperor Auguste seemed, at best, foolishly idealistic, at worst simply inept. But this mosaic was proof of Aurellious’s cruel disregard for humanity. Perhaps if Auguste were like this man, I would join Bunchen’s rebellion and be the general of an army of the undead.

  I wondered if Auguste would make himself out to be lord over death after he hung me. Surely this was the only reason the gods-fearing people of Miraband had allowed this mosaic to be made. The skulls didn’t represent death, not like the fresco in the church hall. They represented undeath, and Aurellious’s triumph over the necromancer. Apparently it was fine to decorate a building with human remains if you were making a point about defeating someone who had built an army with human remains.

  This sort of “art” would never exist in Hart or any of the villages. We still remembered the stories of our grandparents and great-grandparents. We still pressed iron circles over the graves of those we loved.

  I turned my back to the mosaic, and to Emperor Aurellious.

  From this vantage point, I was better able to see the square and the streets lined up around it. The odd pointed intersection that broke the uniformity of the courtyard held a triangular building, and I noticed a sign hand-painted on the wall identifying it as Corner Street.

  The building was four stories high, but all the windows on the third and fourth stories were boarded up, and the second-story windows were empty of glass. One had the ragged remains of a curtain, the wind causing the cloth to billow over the street like a tattered flag.

  I headed across the courtyard and pushed open the only door that wasn’t barred on the building after no one answered my knock. “Hello?” I called, my voice choking on the dust.

  Nothing.

  I considered the possibility that I’d come to the wrong location, or that the collector had long since moved on.

  The building looked as if it were about to cave in. Crates and cloth-covered boxes lined the walls, each with an inch or more of grime covering them. The wooden floor bowed beneath my feet. “Hello?” I called again, louder, a little desperately.

  A man emerged from a small door I’d not noticed before. He was wiping his hands on a piece of cloth that seemed far too dirty for the task. His eyes raked over me, up, down, up again.

  When he smiled, I saw that he was missing one of his canines. “About time you got here.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Grey

  THE PRESENTATION TO the trade authority was not going well at all.

  I had expected . . .

  I didn’t know what I had expected. The city had charmed me immediately, so full of hope and possibility, and the Emperor had so strongly believed in the chance for northern trade with Miraband to put more gold into the pockets of the artisans, farmers, and workers who so desperately needed it. I had been able to push aside the doubts seeded by my father and Nedra. I knew this mission was hasty, but that was out of necessity.

  The trolley had dropped me off outside the palace walls. I could see nothing but smooth limestone with onion domes and spires in the distance. Through the bustle and sounds of the city, I caught a few notes of birdsong and smelled the pleasant scent of citrus. I could visualize the lush gardens the Emperor kept protected from the masses beyond the wall. But any hopes I’d had
of seeing them for myself were dashed as a short man touched my elbow.

  “Greggori Astor of Lunar Island?” he asked.

  I nodded, turning to him.

  “This way.” He led me down the block, then into a small building with walnut floors and shutters on the windows. He opened the door and ushered me inside.

  I saw first the crates of goods I’d purchased from the market, delivered by the captain. I’d hoped to have the chance to open them myself, arrange them on tables and present each item in the best light. Instead, three men had already opened the crates and were rummaging through them. Their sour expressions told me I wasn’t making a favorable first impression.

  “Good sirs!” I said loudly, hoping to draw their attention. I’d practiced this speech with Nedra on the ship, but it sounded hollow now. One of the three men looked up. He nudged another one. “My name is Greggori Astor.” I plastered a smile on my face.

  “Is this all you have?” the third man asked bluntly. He pulled up the orcine top hat I’d gotten at the market, one of the things I’d considered a frontrunner for trade. His distaste was evident.

  “It is made of northern orcine,” I said hurriedly. I took it from his hand, smoothing down the fur and showing it to the men. “The villagers of Lunar Island risk their lives on the rough seas amid the icebergs to hunt this rare creature. The result is—”

  “The result is not nearly as good as wilver pelts from Jool,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “Tell your people to stay at home where it’s warmer.”

  Jool? When did the Allyrian Empire start trading with Jool? I remembered the cog ship in the harbor—the sailors had been Enjan, surely, and now that the nation was folded into the Empire, they must be sailing through the Pan Ocean.