Vespertine

by Margaret Rogerson

  I risked a glance over my shoulder. Between the knights, Sarathiel had rolled over and set Leander’s forehead to the flagstones, fingers clenched and body arched as though in the throes of a convulsion. I swallowed. Nodded.

  Then we were out a door, into the blinding light and roar of voices, the dizzying swarm of movement that filled the cathedral’s square. A tide of people flooded past to slam the door shut behind us, throwing themselves against it, barricading it with their bodies.

  “Artemisia! Marguerite!” This was Charles pushing into view. He had a wild look on his sweaty, grinning face, his tousled hair dusted with a coating of ash. “Jean and I freed the captain,” he shouted. “Halbert almost wet himself when the guard rebelled. Look!”

  I followed his pointing finger to the cathedral’s front steps, onto which a group of people were shoving a wagon. Jean seemed to be doing most of the work, the muscles in his huge arms straining. He lifted one side of it and heaved; a cheer went up as it overturned with a crash against the cathedral’s front doors.

  Carts were being dragged toward the other doors, toppled over in piles. Furniture, barrels, and pieces of disassembled stalls joined them. Loud thumps and clatters of wood suggested that similar measures were taking place at every one of the cathedral’s entrances and exits. It wasn’t just civilians helping, but soldiers too. In the distance, Captain Enguerrand’s hoarse voice shouted orders.

  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.

  I looked back to Captain Enguerrand and Master Olivar and said, “I need to pray.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I was left alone in the stall. To complete the illusion, I had knelt on the ground, where I had gained a view of the empty jars of pig’s blood lined up along a hidden shelf. I wondered if the Lady was feeling ironic. Or perhaps the message wasn’t intended for me—perhaps the stall’s owner was standing outside, shaking in his boots.

  If he was, I had no way of knowing. Only a few hushed voices betrayed the packed square outside, their murmurs barely louder than the stall’s cloth flapping in the breeze. The news that I was praying must have spread. I felt a twinge of guilt at the lie. I was painfully aware of how little time we had and the possibility that I might be wasting it. Thus far, my conversation with the revenant hadn’t been fruitful.

  “So there aren’t any places we could use for a ritual?” I asked in frustration, feeling as though we were talking in circles.

  “No—I mean that if there are, we’re unlikely to find them in time. We would need to search the entire city. That would take days. Our best bet would be the catacombs, but I wouldn’t want to risk opening any of the grates; we might as well ring a dinner bell for Sarathiel….”

  It continued talking, but I was only listening with half an ear, my thoughts churning. It had already explained why we couldn’t create our own ritual site—the same as filing through the shackles, we didn’t have time. Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I stared hard at the cobblestones under my knees. The entire city. Something about that phrase had stuck in my mind.

  The entire city…

  That was it. The cobbles beneath me, the stones that made up the city’s walls—they were ancient. So ancient they attracted shades, just like the ruin outside my old village.

  “What about Bonsaint?” I asked, the idea blossoming in my mind like a bizarre flower, wondrous to behold.

  “Bonsaint? The food is average at best. Architecture, mediocre. And don’t get me started on the overpopulation of nuns—”

  Frowning, I interrupted, “When we first got here, you said that Bonsaint was built from the ruins of another city, one that stood during the Age of Kings.” I felt its startled pause. “Old Magic must have been practiced there. And they’re the same stones, used over again. That’s why you think our best bet is in the catacombs, right? It’s the old city down there. But the old city never went away. It’s still here.”

  “Use an entire city as a single ritual site? That’s… that’s absolutely…” I could tell it wanted to say something like “ridiculous” or “mad,” but it couldn’t. My suggestion held a kernel of possibility.

  “But would it work?” I persisted.

  “No one with any real knowledge of Old Magic would ever propose such an idea, but only because it would never occur to them to try. A ritual of that scale… the consequences if it failed would be astronomical.” Here the revenant hesitated, and my heart plummeted. “But nothing worse than what Sarathiel will do once it’s recovered,” it hastened to assure me, its voice slightly clipped. “And I wouldn’t get it wrong.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked hoarsely, almost shaking with hope.

  “Oh, I’m very sure. As I told you before, I’m no amateur. Let’s see. The ritual’s array would need to encompass the whole city, as though it were a very large version of the altar.”

  I nodded as though I were following.

  “And the runes would need to be spaced at a considerable distance from each other, to avoid exerting too much force on any one location. In the absence of ritual materials, they’ll need to be drawn in your blood—there needs to be an elemental force represented, and blood is one of the most potent—but we can make them small, to avoid using too much….”

  My hands curled. I suspected my nails were digging into my palms; I faintly sensed a dull current of pain through my scars. It was as though a fire burning in my heart, banked ever since Sarathiel had escaped, was now flaring back to life. I couldn’t stay still any longer. Without meaning to, I found myself scrambling to my feet.

  The revenant said quickly, “Nun, don’t get up, I’m not finished yet—”

  Too late. I had already stood and pushed aside the flap. And I couldn’t turn back now: the entire square had been waiting for me to finish praying, and now that I had emerged, not defeated by a lack of answers but vital with purpose, an answering flame of hope was igniting on hundreds of faces.

  For once, it wasn’t hard to speak. To the assembled masses, I said, “I need something sharp. Also, can I borrow someone’s horse?”

  * * *

  As it turned out, I didn’t need the horse right away. The first rune could be drawn in the cathedral’s square, since it was roughly in Bonsaint’s center.

  “As I was about to tell you, before you rudely interrupted me,” the revenant said. “Keep walking. We want the very oldest of the paving stones. Yes—stop—right there.”

  I halted and clambered down to my knees at the spot it had indicated. Whispers followed my every movement. At first a few people had tried to touch me as I paced around the square, but Charles, Marguerite, and Jean had closed in around me like my own personal guard. I felt the revenant trying to cast its senses toward Mother Dolours, only to give up, thwarted by the shackles. “Just keep praying, you horrible nun,” it muttered. I pretended not to have heard.

  My stomach was in knots; I was dreading what came next. I reminded myself that to everyone watching, this wouldn’t look like Old Magic. It would just look like I was drawing a holy symbol. Even so, sweat began to gather beneath my chemise. I still knew that I was about to commit heresy, even if no one else did.

  I couldn’t lose my nerve before I even began. I had six more to go; this rune would be the first of seven, spread out to form a city-wide array.

  “It will be easy,” the revenant assured me. “I can create an image of the rune inside your mind, and you only need to copy the shape. This one will probably even look familiar to you. It’s a grounding rune, which is very common.”

  I hesitated, glancing back at the cathedral. I could no longer see the candles glowing in the window. Scanning the ravens perched on the surrounding rooftops, I detected no hint of Trouble’s white feathers. I couldn’t find the words for what I wanted to ask. But I didn’t need to. The revenant understood.

  It said quietly, “You don’t have to be the one to do it.”

  I ducked my head, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat. Unable to speak, I nodded.

  “Just concentrate on relaxing. No, not like that. You have relaxed before, haven’t you?” It sighed. “On second thought, never mind. Do you remember what it felt like on the battlefield when you gave me control of your arm?”

  When that had happened, I hadn’t made a conscious choice; I hadn’t had time to think. It had been an instinctual act, like handing over a tool. Concentrating hard, I tried not to think, sought to find that place of blank acceptance.

  When the switch occurred, it wasn’t the same as in the cathedral. I didn’t notice anything strange until my mouth opened and I said, “Charles, would you hand me the knife?” Except I wasn’t the one asking the question. It was the revenant speaking through my mouth.

  Charles had been the one to search the crowd at my request. He’d returned with a simple carving
knife, its blade crude but well-honed. Now he handed it to me in silence, then solemnly stepped back. The onlookers watched eagerly to see what I would do next. I wondered in despair if the knife would end up being called the sacred dagger, its replicas sold on the streets.

  Charles blanched when the revenant shrugged back my sleeve and lowered the dagger above my arm. Marguerite, less surprised, took hold of Jean’s arm and firmly turned him around. I was glad Enguerrand had left to find a horse. I had a strange feeling that if he were here, he might try to stop me.

  The knife hung poised above my arm. I waited for the cut, then waited some more. Nothing happened. It was as though my body had turned to stone, the dagger frozen in midair. Light quivered on the blade; my hand was shaking.

  “I can’t do it,” the revenant muttered at last.

  It didn’t mean the Old Magic, I realized in amazement. It meant that it couldn’t cut me, even though it only needed a little of my blood, and the cut would barely sting. My chest tightened with unexpected sympathy. Embarrassed, the revenant quickly handed back control.

  Someone in the crowd whispered, “Is she going to—” the moment before the knife’s edge met my skin.

  A brief flash of pain. Then a sluggish rivulet of blood traced the curve of my arm, and a single shining droplet landed on the cobbles. I hadn’t cut deeply, knowing I would need to score a new wound for each rune.

  I passed back control to the revenant, who immediately flung the knife aside as though repulsed by it. It dipped my fingers in the blood and began to draw.

  The rune took shape in glistening dabs of red. The revenant was right; I had seen this symbol before. It was carved on one of the cornerstones of the chapel in Naimes and decorated many of the oldest tombstones in the graveyard. Novices were taught that it meant something like “peace” or “rest.”