Ink in the Blood

by Kim Smejkal

  A robed mistico had turned to strike Celia, so she stuttered the name, turning Anna into An-yaaaaah.

  But seconds later the child muttered, “Anya’s perfect,” as if the mistico’s disapproval was exactly what she needed.

  “We might get Lupita as a tutor,” Anya said, nudging her pointy chin toward the calm, smiling, gray-haired one Celia had crossed her fingers for. How did Anya know so much about this place?

  “I hope so.”

  “No.” Anya shook her head hard. “My parents said she’s the worst. Only sweet on the outside.”

  A faint uncertainty nudged at Celia. Anya’s anger and her parents’ warning hinted at a different story from the one Celia had received.

  But Celia stared up at the mistico who’d hit her, fairly sure he was the worst. Young and pretty, iron-cold eyes, and an arrow-straight spine. “I’m due a pair with this batch,” he said.

  Socks, dice, gloves—​those were things that came in pairs. Muffins and cookies came in a batch. Not children.

  Mistico Lupita calmly stated, “You’re not ready for apprentices yet, Benedict. Continue with your own training first, and we’ll reassess the possibility of a promotion with the next round.”

  “That’s four years from now.”

  “It’s four years from now.” Mistico Lupita’s tone said end of story.

  Scuffling boots, a long, loud wail, and laughter cut through their disagreement.

  A young mistico with hair as pale as wheat turned a corner, blazing toward them with guards close behind. She shrieked and laughed, pulling her clutching hands away from her head with fistfuls of her own hair.

  Celia flinched and shut her eyes.

  With Mistico Lupita shouting orders to the guards over the screaming mistico, the entire courtyard had erupted in sound.

  But it was the smell that scared Celia the most. The fair-haired mistico grabbed her, her breath foul enough to rot an apple, her tenor pressing close and feeling like a threat as it invaded Celia’s space. With her slim fingers gripping Celia’s shoulders painfully, her screams turned into a song. “It’s all games, darling. It’s all lies.”

  The guards grabbed the mistico and pulled her back. Mistico Lupita bowed her head reverently, her whispered prayers and benedictions in the background. In the foreground, the wild mistico delivered one more line: “You lose when your bones hum from the inside . . .”

  Humming bones? Celia inhaled sharply and cupped her hand around her wrist—​searching for any quaking that shouldn’t be there—​and shared a frightened look with Anya. That sounded painful. Wrong.

  Calmly, a prayer still on his lips, Mistico Benedict took a bottle from a pocket in his robes, poured its contents on a rag, and pressed it to the wailing mistico’s nose and mouth. The voice-shredding screams stopped abruptly as she lost consciousness. Before the echoes of her song had faded, before Celia could even register the metallic glint of the blade in Mistico Benedict’s hand or where it had come from, a red river streamed from slices on the wild mistico’s throat.

  Somewhere close, a child screamed. That sound stopped abruptly too.

  The guards dragged away the now forever quiet mistico, the temple doors slamming behind them.

  Lupita finished her prayer and took the blood-soaked knife from Benedict, wiping it with her own cloth as she continued her lecture on his suitability for apprentices.

  As if nothing at all had just happened.

  As if someone who’d needed help hadn’t just been killed.

  Beside her, Anya shivered so violently her teeth knocked together. Her chin was tilted up, her fists balled at her sides, her eyes open but unfocused. It looked like she was fighting hard to keep a scream from escaping.

  Which meant, maybe, that the killing had been real.

  The little vein that bulged on Mistico Benedict’s smooth forehead pulsed harder when he noticed Celia staring at him again. “What’s significant about the Flogging?” he demanded.

  Words stuck. The vein on his forehead was all Celia could see.

  Mistico Lupita stepped forward. “The Solemn Mistico asked you a question, child.” Her voice was kind. She smiled as she continued to wipe the blade. “You have to answer.”

  Celia recited what she knew, stammering her way through. “A child said she was the Divine returned to the mortal realm. She knew a lot of strange things and almost got away with it, people almost believed her, but she couldn’t command the ink. She was flogged to death with a nine-tailed whip. It was actually Diavala, trying to trick us. We have to watch out for her.”

  Benedict slapped her upside the head, her black hair falling in her eyes from the blow.

  When she tried to push it away, another smack.

  “I asked for the significance.”

  Celia’s lip quivered, mats of stray hair hiding her eyes. She didn’t dare brush it away again. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Beside her, Anya whispered, “Solemn Mistico.”

  “Solemn Mistico,” Celia added.

  “Well, you’re clever.” Mistico Benedict turned to Anya, his boots swiveling on the cobblestones to face the other direction. “Perhaps you should answer for her.”

  Celia sniffled and tried to hold in her crying. The screams and wails of the rotten mistico still burned her ears. Humming bones, humming bones . . . That silver blade, that red neck, that casual ending of life. The new smells—​rotten apple, sweetness from the rag, the dull, metallic smell of blood—​mixing with the rain.

  Anya hesitated before she said, “Only the Divine commands the ink.”

  A tsk of approval. Mistico Benedict hit Celia again for good measure, yanking the first sob out. She’d already snotted and blubbered everywhere, all over her hair. That made her cry more.

  But so quietly.

  She tried to be smart like Anya. She watched Mistico Benedict’s boots walk away and let her mewling whimper escape only when the mistico was far enough away. She still didn’t move her hair.

  Somewhere in the bowels of their new home, the fair-haired mistico’s bones weren’t humming anymore. They weren’t doing anything at all, and never would again. Another child had started crying, begging for his parents. And another. Maybe they’d always been, and Celia hadn’t heard, so caught up inside herself. The kind-looking, sweet poison of Mistico Lupita ignored everything except her task of sorting children. Celia’s head hurt from the blows of the iron-eyed Mistico Benedict. She was covered in snot and couldn’t stop crying.

  Anya hooked her pinky around Celia’s, as if they did it all the time.

  And nothing had ever felt so dangerous.

  Chapter 3

  The fair-haired mistico had been the first Celia and Anya had seen with the Touch, but there’d been many since. Apparently, the screams meant rapture more than suffering. The Touch was coveted insanity, the closest you could get to the Divine. Death was a final release into her arms.

  Humming bones, madness, lies, and blades: the hidden benefits of life inside the temple.

  Exhausted from work and still hung over from the night before, Celia tripped her way toward the dining hall the next evening, using Wallis’s shoulder for support. She plopped herself on a bench and put her head down on the table with a moan.

  Wallis, bless them, fetched both of their suppers. “Have you seen the new tapestry?” they asked, their smile big and toothy, and nudged their dimpled chin toward the back wall, where workers struggled to hang the behemoth rug. “I helped tassel it.” They pointed to a spot on the bottom left corner where all the white tassels seemed marginally shorter than the rest of the fringe.

  “Well, your work is exceptional. And this year’s piece sure is . . .” Celia considered the panels. “Breathtakingly prosaic.”

  Wallis furrowed their brow as they ate their bland (honey-kissed) stew. “What does that mean?”

  Celia meant that Ruler Vacilando commissioned a new piece for the Ascension celebration every year, but no matter the medium, the images didn’t chan
ge.

  Panel 4: Birth. A landscape of the hill where the child oracle had first used the ink to guide the people, with lines of pilgrims winding their way to see her. The same hill on which the temple now perched.

  Panel 3: Ascension. After her murder, the child oracle left the mortal realm. Representing this moment is the familiar image of the four-faced, six-eyed robed figure, seeing into all human directions and into the realms of the afterlife. Above her head is a lightning bolt, symbolic of her transformation to Other.

  Panel 2: The Flogging. Always nice and graphic. A blunt portrayal of the damage a nine-tailed whip can inflict on a body. A warning to be on guard for Diavala’s trickery.

  Panel 1: The Return. Similar in composition to the Ascension—​a lightning bolt, a figure—​except the figure is entirely human. Her features are always obscured, lending to the mystery, but people would know she truly walked earth again because her own ink would proclaim it.

  Celia meant that those four images were already everywhere, from Illinia’s coins to public buildings to crests, and she meant that Profeta stood on four rickety legs, one of which hadn’t even happened yet, and why didn’t everyone see how shaky the table was?

  She said, “I wish they’d take the opportunity to be more creative, that’s all. Although Diavala’s flogging even has crimson blood and gore woven in to boost the effect. That’s great attention to detail.”

  Wallis shrugged. “I guess.” They started to eat, unbothered. Wallis’s faith hadn’t been stolen by monstrous doubt their very first time at the temple, and Celia refused to push them there. She had a feeling Wallis would get there on their own anyway.

  “Have you seen Anya?” Celia asked. It wasn’t unusual for them not to see each other all day, depending on their rotation of chores or work orders, but they almost always met for supper.

  Through a mouthful of stew Wallis mumbled, “Oh, Anya said you need to check out the light crooked path.”

  Celia choked and almost fell backwards. “What?”

  Wallis’s eyes widened before their face rearranged itself into a confused frown. “She was looking for you at the baths and seemed rushed. I have no idea where she meant. Maybe that path from the dorms to the big fountain?”

  Celia garbled out a goodbye, already on her way out of the hall. She checked her speed so as not to raise any suspicious eyebrows. “The crooked path becomes light.” The phrase came from Lupita’s favorite poem about freedom and independence . . . and escape. Lupita had told them that when she came up with a plan to help them leave the temple—​and it was always when, never if, despite the odds—​she’d use that as the signal.

  Celia swallowed, trying to get the last lump of food down, her mind racing in a hundred different directions, each one chasing escape, escape, escape. She tried to temper her excitement with a healthy dose of levelheadedness: their old tutor wasn’t to be relied on for much anymore, beyond inappropriate cackles and lewd jokes. Could be nothing, nothing, nothing . . .

  She headed straight for the crypt.

  The dead didn’t hold opinions about rules, so the crypt had been Celia’s and Anya’s preferred entrance and exit for years when they didn’t want to announce their movement at the front gates. A basement maze of stone pillars, recessed rooms, and rows upon rows of gleaming white skulls on shelves, most people avoided it.

  Celia wasn’t most people. She and the head skullkeeper had been in love once, as much as thirteen-year-olds can be in love, and they still held an extra-squishy soft spot for each other. The crypts were a safe space because Zuni was there, despite the gruesome decorations.

  “There you are.” Zuni’s face flushed red when Celia found her in a dark corner of the processing room. “I didn’t want to be halfway through prepping a skull when you showed up.”

  Celia smiled at her, her heart pinging at the thought that Zuni had been waiting for her. Zuni didn’t return the gesture—​losing her smile was the cost of moving, decapitating, and burning dead people all day, every day, for years—​but the corners of her mouth softened whenever she met Celia’s eyes. A reflex that time couldn’t tame.

  Celia grabbed the handles of the closest wheelbarrow, trying to ignore the sheet-covered body inside. Profeta kept only the skulls of the Touched and didn’t bother keeping any part of a heretic—​so there was a lot of excess for Zuni to burn outside.

  They walked side by side up the ramp, the barrow’s wheels squeaking like a family of rats. Celia had never asked how, exactly, Zuni did her work, and Zuni had never offered the information. The pyres seemed straightforward enough, but the skull cleaning could very well have been done by rats. Or beetles. Or acid.

  It was a mystery Celia didn’t particularly want the answer to and one Zuni guarded closely. Zuni refused to take an apprentice, saying that her knowledge was her only safeguard against ending up on a pyre herself. After Ruler Vacilando had appealed for “heartier stock” to work in the Divine’s service, Zuni’s family, butchers by trade, had walked away from her with the temple’s gratitude, a yearly stipend from the state, one fewer mouth to feed, and a feeling of righteous self-sacrifice. That was how Zuni had described it three years ago, and time hadn’t softened her opinion. The reason she and Celia had hit it off so well? Equally jaded.

  “Did you ever consider that by leaving from the same exit as the dead, it’s like you’re doing test runs?” Zuni asked. She leaned over to fold a flopping arm back into the barrow, then feigned a shiver as she met Celia’s eyes. “So morbid, Celia.” Celia started laughing, almost dumping the contents of the barrow completely. But her breath hitched as Zuni leaned closer, the air between them overtaken by Zuni’s tenor. The swarming colors haloing Zuni’s face proved the limitation of words: even the continuum of she lacked all depth for her. The air around her could be deep reds similar to Anya’s, or silvers similar to Dante’s, or any combination of reds and silvers, pale or vivid. Deep reds always dominated, but most of Zuni’s internal landscape swayed, constantly in flux along the long continuum of her. It had been an impossible game for Celia, trying to find a pattern to it.

  She’d leaped at any excuse to stare at Zuni, really. Still did.

  When Celia pushed through the heavy outer door with the front of the barrow, sunlight assaulted them. So rare in Illinia for the sun to peek out from behind clouds that it momentarily stunned both of them.

  “You might even see a sunset,” Celia said, squinting. “What a night to spend outside burning heretics.”

  Compact rows of pale grave markers gleamed, the farthest ones bright specks of white on the horizon—​the long-ago dead, before the cemetery had run out of room. Anya, waiting for Celia under a distant tree at the edge of the temple grounds, waved.

  Zuni pulled Celia in for a quick, one-armed hug. “Have a drink for me?”

  Celia grabbed her arm and turned the half hug into a full hug, the scent of death that always lingered on Zuni a particular comfort when paired with her warm embrace. “I’ll find you a feather.”

  The freckles on Zuni’s nose folded over themselves as she scrunched her face and looked away, the closest she ever came to a smile, and something that looked as if it physically hurt her. “Thanks, Cece.”

  Birds didn’t come near the temple, not even to the tree-filled cemetery. Celia figured their light, hollow bones must be particularly sensitive to the occasional humming skeleton, and they were smart enough to stay away.

  Zuni hadn’t seen a bird in three full years.

  * * *

  Rich Asurans could afford homes on stilts, but most lived on the unavoidable water in rows of docked houseboats. As Celia and Anya sat in the prow of a gondola, weaving through canal after canal toward Lupita’s, Anya’s stomach revolted predictably. In another life, Anya would have been Asura’s harbormaster: methodical, precise, organized, and able to coordinate everything without ever touching water herself.

  They paid the gondolier with their last two kropi as he muttered curses tangled with gratitude that
most of Anya’s illness had made it to the canal and he didn’t have to clean much from the bottom of his boat.

  The dip and sway of Lupita’s floating home wouldn’t help, but Anya soldiered on.

  “Lupita!” Celia called after they let themselves in. “Do we have a treat for you!” She wandered into the cluttered kitchen, lighting some lamps to fend off the bleak atmosphere, and began clearing off surfaces. Slowly, slowly, calm down, this might be nothing, don’t hope too much.

  Lupita had moved to the houseboat after leaving the temple, and five years of depression hung heavy in the air. Her loss of faith had been sudden and sharp—​a knife cut or a plunge underwater—​and it had broken her in significant ways.

  Celia wore a reminder of it around her wrist: that worn leather bracelet from her friend Salome. At eleven, Celia had stolen a bunch of inkling quills, intending to snap them all. It was a protest she knew would get her killed, but in the heat of the moment her thoughts were violent, filled with rage, unconcerned with consequence. She’d broken only one—​Salome’s—​before she calmed down enough to realize that she might get all the inklings in trouble. Water torture for everyone, perhaps, for the mystery of the broken quills.

  She had to tell the truth about what she’d done, so she was the only one who suffered for it.

  She’d found Mistico Lupita and High Mistico Benedict. They’d listened to her wailing confession, and High Mistico Benedict had calmly nodded. Then he ordered Mistico Lupita to execute Salome.

  “Celia just admitted her crime,” Lupita had argued. Though never one to shrink away from rules and order, Lupita hadn’t been able to slot his command into any Profetan logic. Her thoughts seemed to spin around terms like unjust, spiteful, unrighteous, unsure where to land.

  “She did,” Benedict had said. “But this is an opportunity to teach her what true remorse feels like.”

  And because at that point High Mistico Benedict outranked her, outranked everyone except the Divine herself, Lupita had done it. And as Salome died at her hand, Lupita’s spinning thoughts had landed on one absolute word: wrong.