by Kat Ross
Natalya yawned. “Fra Bryce was rather delicious though.”
“He’s too young,” Kasia muttered.
“He can’t be less than thirty.” Nashka laughed. “I suppose the big scruffy one is more to your taste.”
“Normally, yes. But since I was thinking with my brain, I can’t say either of them appeals.”
“You just don’t like priests.”
“I don’t dislike them,” Kasia clarified. “Not on principle. I just don’t want them poking into my affairs.”
Nashka wound a strand of Kasia’s hair around her finger, then made it into a mustache. “All the pretty ones get snapped up by the Pontifex, did you ever notice that?”
“You’re a terrible person.”
“It’s true.” She tickled Kasia’s ear with the hair until Kasia batted her hand away. “Well, now that I’m up, I may as well do some work.” Natalya took her robe off and tossed it over a chair. She only had one Mark, an amber-maned dragon that wrapped around her left biceps and wound all the way down to her wrist. The scales shimmered in shades of red and green like burnished metal.
Natalya settled down at the worktable and removed her left glove. She had immense artistic talent, inborn, and the ley took that spark and stoked it to a hot blaze. Now she took up a fine horsehair brush, lips pursed in concentration as she consulted a sketchpad. Her latest commission was a cartomancy deck for a wealthy client. The Major Arcana were variations of the saints and the four suits represented the Curia cities: Wolves for Kvengard, Flames for Jalghuth, Ravens for Novostopol and Crossed Keys for Nantwich. Each card took a full day to paint, the colors as rich and vibrant as a garden in bloom. When it was done, the deck would cover Nashka’s share of the rent for the next two months.
Kasia watched her work with the melancholic feeling she always had in the presence of her friend’s genius. Envy wasn’t the right word. More like regret. She rarely fretted over the past, there seemed to be no point, but now she saw the branching paths of her own life, the choices made or not made, the turns left rather than right, and wondered. She earned her keep from the idea of destiny, but she wasn’t sure she believed it anymore. The Lovers? That was unlikely. Kasia trusted no one except for Nashka and Tessaria Foy. Could trust no one.
She curled up on the couch and fell asleep to Natalya’s humming and the ceaseless sound of rain.
Chapter Eight
“Do you believe them?” Alexei asked as he drove back to the Arx.
Spassov shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough if the story checks out.”
He squinted through the torrents of rain battering the windscreen. “It seemed rehearsed to me.”
In fact, he knew it was rehearsed. Spassov was very good at wrestling people to the ground, but he lacked finesse when it came to questioning witnesses. Domina Novak was a skilled actress, but she was hiding something. The foot tapping. The veering between defiance and avoidance. She had magnetism in spades, though. As tired as he was, Alexei’s mouth had gone a little dry when she answered the door.
“Forget about the woman,” Spassov covered a yawn. “It’s Massot we need to focus on.”
“Do me a favor,” Alexei said. “Keep Novak’s name out of it. Just for now.”
Patryk shot him a look. “You have to put both their statements in the report. We do this one by the book, Alyosha, or they’ll hang us out to dry.”
“Of course,” Alexei said reasonably. “I just want to look into her before the legions come swarming down on our case.”
“Why?”
“A hunch.”
Patryk sighed and leaned back against the headrest. “It’s the middle of the night anyway. I’m going to bed until we hear from Pagwe.”
The streets were deserted. Alexei slowed for the red lights but didn’t bother stopping, and ten minutes later they drove through the gates of the Arx. Spassov stumbled up the stairs to his quarters, but Alexei was wide awake. He splashed water on his face and changed into a fresh cassock. Then he went to the kennels to look in on the Markhounds.
They were kept in a stone building behind the Tower of Saint Dima that had once been used for storing casks of wine. The vaulted interior smelled strongly of wet dog, but he noted with approval that clean straw covered the floor and the water bowls were full. Alexei held the novices to high standards when it came to care of the Markhounds. They might be creatures of the ley, but they were also living, breathing animals who deserved humane treatment. He checked on them at least twice a day, and woe if he discovered neglect. He also performed a head count after they’d been loose.
As always, Alice was the first to greet him at the door. Her brown eyes looked apologetic like she knew she’d been outfoxed. Alexei took a glove off and rubbed her flank, hand lingering on an old scar transecting the haunch. It gave her a slight limp, though she ran just as swiftly as the others. His gaze blanked out for a moment. Violet fire traced his Marks, surging up from the liminal ley. Alexei’s eyes cleared.
“Never mind,” he said. “You did your best.”
A quick survey of the kennel showed the rest accounted for. There were six packs altogether, housing in adjoining chambers. When someone Turned, they all started barking, but only a single pack would appear in the courtyard. It was one of the mysteries Alexei pondered when he couldn’t sleep. Did the dogs decide who would take the duty? Or did the ley? The Pontifex Luk would surely know the answer, though Alexei doubted he’d ever have a chance to ask.
Satisfied that his charges were settled in for the night, he grabbed the car keys and drove to the Tabularium. It was just after four a.m. when he parked in front of the neoclassical building next to the Pontifex’s Palace. It housed kilometers of shelving with records dating back more than a millennium to the Second Dark Age. The one in Nantwich was even larger, with fragments from the time before. Clavis, the Pontifex of the Western Curia, had made it her life’s work to gather old knowledge—some of which, it was whispered in certain quarters, would be better forgotten. Alexei wasn’t sure he agreed, though he understood the perils. Before the Praefators discovered the ley, society had nearly doomed itself to oblivion. An age of wonders—and horrors beyond imagining.
Some of that knowledge had been revived during the war. Explosive shells, for example. Poison gas. After heated debate, the Curia had banned such weapons again. They joined a technology blacklist encompassing everything except for cars and basic telephone and electrical service. Kvengard rejected even those conveniences, but in Novo the conservatives were overruled by the more liberal Neoteric faction headed by Cardinal Falke. Alexei had been relieved. Horses feared Markhounds and he couldn’t imagine hauling an Invertido to the Institute draped over the back of a saddle.
He climbed the steps and rang the bell. There was no overhang and he huddled in the rain for more than a minute before pressing the buzzer again, a long, sustained peal. At last, shuffling footsteps approached. The bolt was thrown back. A priest peered through the door, chin thrust forward. He was in his early forties, but his face had the pinched, sunken aspect of a much older man.
“Do you know what time it is, Bryce?” he demanded.
“I apologize, but I need access to the archives, Fra Bendixon,” Alexei said, inwardly cursing his luck.
Most people who joined the Curia fell into two broad categories. The first were naturally generous souls who wanted to make the world a better place. The second were troubled and lonely and had difficulty relating to others. Fra Bendixon was one of the latter.
The priest stared at him in annoyance. “Just because you keep ludicrous hours, you seem to expect the rest of us ought to, as well. Come back in the morning.” He started to close the door. Alexei jammed his foot in the crack.
“I have the authority,” he said mildly. “As the on-duty archivist, you cannot refuse me. And if I’m forced to wake my superiors in the middle of the night, who do you think they’ll be more upset with?”
Fra Bendixon viewed the Interfectorem as a bunch of savages, an
d Alexei in particular as a thorn in his side. As far as Alexei knew, he was the only one to regularly demand admittance outside of regular hours, but his work necessitated it. Night duty rotated among the roster of archivists so at least he didn’t wake the same priest each time. None were exactly happy to see his face, but Fra Bendixon took it as a personal assault to be roused from his blankets.
They had the same exchange each time, an obligatory joust that always ended with threats from Alexei and ill-humored concession by Bendixon.
“What’s so important anyway?” the priest muttered.
“We have a delicate situation, you understand? It can’t wait. If I don’t file my preliminary report in the next few hours—”
“Da, da,” Bendixon said sourly. “But make it quick or I’ll be the one to lodge a complaint.” He stabbed a finger at Alexei’s sodden exorason. “And leave that in the cloakroom. I won’t have you dripping all over the wood floors. They were just waxed!”
Alexei refrained from pointing out that he was only so wet because Bendixon had left him standing out in the rain. “Of course,” he said. “Thank you for the indulgence, brother.”
Alexei’s stubborn courtesy only annoyed the archivist more. He sniffed loudly but stepped back and opened the door. Once the offending garment was stowed in the cloakroom, Bendixon escorted Alexei past the reception desk, flipping on overhead lights as he went. By ancient tradition, the Tabularium and the Probatio, also a records repository, were the only buildings inside the walls of the Arx to have electricity. The risk of fire was simply too great to permit candles or torches.
“Civil register, I assume?” Bendixon asked briskly.
“Yes.”
The Eastern Curia kept files on every citizen of Novostopol, and a separate register for members of the clergy. Access to the latter was restricted, but anyone had the right to examine the first. If you wished to know how many Marks someone had, and who had given them, you had only to fill out a request at the Tabularium’s reception desk—during regular business hours, of course.
The records Alexei sought were in a vast gallery lined with row upon row of file drawers. Bendixon unlocked the door, then hovered with arms crossed as Alexei took out his notebook.
“The subject of my report is confidential,” Alexei reminded him. “I’ll have to request that you wait elsewhere.”
Another loud sniff, but the priest retreated. “You have twenty minutes,” he called over his shoulder.
Alexei didn’t waste time responding. He strode swiftly down the center of the gallery, pausing at M. Ferran Massot’s file was already gone—pulled by Kireyev’s agents at the Office of the General Directorate, no doubt—but he located Kasia Novak’s within minutes. Alexei wrote down the pertinent details in his notebook.
Twenty-eight years old. A Novo native. Parents killed in a car wreck, no siblings. Marked by a retired vestal named Tessaria Foy. Public school through age 18, but she never went on to the Lyceum. Occupation listed as self-employed. Unless she lied massively on her tax returns, Domina Novak didn’t earn much as a cartomancer. The extent of her criminal activity was a slew of parking tickets. Her address matched the flat on Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa. Alexei jotted down the license plate of her car and replaced the file. He rubbed his eyes. Another dead end.
It would be a very long day tomorrow. Or was it already today? Time had grown fuzzy of late. He should try to sleep, but Alexei knew it would be useless. Once he got into bed, he’d lie there staring at the ceiling. If he took the pills, he’d be foggy when they questioned Massot, and he couldn’t afford that . . . .
“Fra Bryce!”
Bendixon’s petulant voice snapped him out of oblivion. Alexei realized he’d slumped against the filing cabinet. The notebook lay at his feet. He didn’t remember dropping it.
“Are you deaf? I’ve been calling your name for five minutes!”
Alexei scooped up the notebook. He stood too fast and the gallery lengthened like a hall of mirrors, file cabinets marching to infinity. Trembling fingers scrabbled for the pocket of his cassock. He found the coin, squeezing it hard in his palm. The world righted itself.
“I’m finished here,” he said, brushing past Bendixon.
“You can see yourself out, Bryce. Twice in one night is quite enough. I’ll never know why they don’t just give you people a key!”
Twice? Alexei thought blurrily, steering for the cloakroom. Oh. The Massot file. That explained why Bendixon was even grumpier than usual. But they didn’t know about Domina Novak when Spassov called from the Institute, did they?
No, not yet, or her file would have been gone, too.
Alexei stumbled down the steps, but instead of returning to the Tower of Saint Dima he crossed the muddy green to the Iveron Chapel. The doors were always left open, the candles kept burning, though it was deserted now. He knelt before the stained glass windows of the clerestory.
There was no God in the Via Sancta. No Heaven or Hell. The doctrine of his Church taught individual responsibility. Seeking the highest expression of humanity here on earth, in this lifetime. The five virtues were compassion, courage, fidelity, honesty, and forgiveness. Purity had been dropped from the list after the Ninth Pontifical Council. It was impossible to enforce and frankly, a species that denied its lustful urges wouldn’t last long. Not even priests and vestals were expected to be celibate anymore. The prohibition on alcohol had been even more short-lived.
In general, the Church took a progressive stance on personal freedoms, even mild vices, but it drew a hard line on violence for self-gratification. Hatred had no place, nor revenge.
Saints, help me.
Alexei gazed up at the triptych, a fevered flush cresting his sharp cheekbones.
The first showed Lezarius defending the walls of Nantwich. His forces had swept down from the north to break a siege of the city. A crucial, bloody battle.
The second, his captivity in Bal Agnar. The Pontifex Balaur stood over a chained Lezarius, whip in hand. Blood leaked from a hundred cuts.
In the last triptych, blue light streamed from the martyr’s palms and eyes. On either side, mages cowered as loyal knights drove spears into their bodies. The creation of the Black Zone. Despite the chaos around him, Lezarius appeared serene.
Through a veil of exhaustion, Alexei saw another face, but this one was contorted in psychic agony, the eyes wide, the mouth a yawning hole.
Alexei’s bile rose. He tore a glove off, pulling ley into his Marks. They flared with blue light, then went icy cold. It wasn’t the memory itself they fought to suppress. Memories were simply a record of past events, necessary to self-identity and orientation in the world. No, the problem arose in the emotional state they triggered. The Dark Wound.
His stomach cramped, pain gripping his head in a vise.
Saints, help me . . . .
* * *
Alexei smelled smoke.
Sweat soaked the tunic beneath his chain mail. Midsummer in the ruins of Bal Kirith and the jungle humidity made each breath feel like drowning. His company of twenty knights occupied the former Arx, setting up camp in the shelled ruins. The ley had flooded and the stelae needed to be inspected. Most of it had already seeped back into the earth, following veins too deep to access. The tidal force imposed by the grid would pull the ley back to the Curia cities within a few days, but he could sense a weak residue.
Two knights were tinkering with a field radio, trying to find a signal. Alexei sat on a scorched wooden pew, sharpening his sword and watching barn swallows dive through holes in the chapel dome. They were feasting on swarms of mosquitoes that hovered in visible clouds, undeterred by torches soaked in eucalyptus oil. He slapped his neck and examined the smear of blood on his glove with weary resignation. Mosquitoes avoided Marks, but any bit of exposed flesh was fair game. Two of the knights already shivered in their bedrolls, down with fever. Malaria, most likely. Or dengue.
Alexei silently cheered on the swallows and ran a cloth down his blade, drawing off exce
ss oil from the whetstone. It didn’t need sharpening, but he wanted something to take his mind off the oppressive heat. Torrential rains came early each morning in Bal Kirith, forming the stagnant pools that bred pestilence. By eleven or so, when a fierce sun broke the treetops, the mercury soared into the triple-digits and stayed there until nightfall. Then it would be feeding time in earnest. Thank the Saints they slept under netting, which helped as long as you weren’t on sentry duty. But the humidity never relented and between the blood loss and constant sweating, Alexei estimated he’d lost five kilos since they arrived.
“Sir!” A knight strode up, a pair of Markhounds trotting at her heels.
The captain turned. “Yes, Vilmos?”
“We found the residue of a campfire inside the basilica.” Only her green eyes were visible through the helm. “Looks fairly fresh.”
Alexei tensed. Nine days without a single skirmish. It seemed too good to be true, though they hadn’t let their guard down. Not for an instant. The newspapers back home trumpeted the Curia’s victory, but Alexei knew better. As long as a single nihilim lived, there would never be true peace. Alexei glanced at the captain, tall and resplendent in his gilded armor. He was poring over a map of the Arx and didn’t seem surprised. Alexei realized then that the mission to inspect the Wards was in fact a search-and-annihilate.
Well, of course it was. He felt a surge of betrayal at the subterfuge, but it faded as quickly as it came. Their captain was only following orders. He’d never put his knights at risk without a good reason.
Unlike the rest of them, he never seemed tired or afraid. He was everything a leader ought to be. Decisive, strategic, rational. He knew when to force engagement, and on what terrain, and which fights could not be won without maximum bloodshed. He taught them that each contact with the enemy was an equation to be manipulated for advantage. Emotion had no place on the battlefield.
