Mikhail
The gods weep when a Son of Galaser dies.
Berend would know. It rained for five days straight after the battle on Braenach Hill, when nine Sons out of every ten were slaughtered in the grass, seven years ago. He stood in the mud, afterward, water pouring down on his bandaged head, and listened to the announcement that he and the handful of others still standing would be out of work, as part of the terms of their employer’s surrender.
Not many walked off that hill. Even fewer are still around.
And now one of them is lying in six pieces on an embalming table.
Berend takes another swig from his flask. The liquor burns on the way down, but at least it’s warm.
“I’m sorry, Mikhail,” he says to the wet, gray evening. “You didn’t deserve this.”
The rain is steady, and distant thunder rolls over the field. Water runs from the chapel’s gutters, pressing a rut into the soft earth beneath. The little overhang above the door keeps Berend mostly dry, but the wind is cold, and he shivers.
For a moment, he lets himself long for the Widow Breckenridge’s feather bed. She did say she’d like the pleasure of his company, now that he was back in Mondirra, but he’s got to do this for Mikhail. Maybe he can sell his better doublet, scrape together enough for a proper funeral—and a headstone, maybe, or at least a plaque. Something to say that Mikhail Ranseberg lived, and he mattered.
The nearsighted old monk who runs the chapel offered to perform his rites and bury him here, on the blue field, in a hole marked only by the flowers that give the place its name. Berend refused. He’s going to do right by Mikhail. The man may have been a drunk, these last few years, but he was a Son of Galaser, and that name carries weight even though there are few to remember it.
That is why Berend is waiting here, at night, by the chapel in the blue field. So that someone is looking out for Mikhail.
It’s getting colder, and the thunder sounds nearer with every crack. Where is the blasted Sentinel, anyway? Brother Risoven sent for him hours ago.
Berend sighs and tries not to shiver. He’s starting to doubt the Sentinel is coming. He wanted to wait, and not be in the same room as the body and the reek of dead flesh, but he might change his mind if no one shows up soon.
He’s not sure a Sentinel will do much good, though it was he and not Constable Mulhy who insisted Brother Risoven send the message. They’re a dying breed, much like the Sons. Berend has heard they can talk to ghosts, ask them questions, send them on their way to Ondir’s cold and loving embrace, but he’s never seen it done. Still, he wants to know who did this to Mikhail. Mulhy has yet to find any witnesses, and Mikhail isn’t exactly in a state to talk to him.
Mulhy is pacing. Berend can see his shadow moving back and forth under the door—Risoven has lit enough candles in there for a temple ten times as big as this chapel. Maybe it’ll help Mikhail’s spirit, or maybe the old monk can’t see so well in the dark.
And by the Seven, it’s dark. The storm will be overhead any moment now.
Berend takes another drink and stomps his feet on the packed earth to restore some feeling to his toes. He wishes he’d worn a heavier cloak. He wishes someone hadn’t decided to rend poor Mikhail limb from limb, but here he is. It must have been a gang leader, a powerful criminal, sending a message to his rivals, even though Mulhy says there hasn’t been any conflict recently in the Shell District where Mikhail was found.
There are hoofbeats, soft and quiet on the wet soil and barely audible underneath the sound of the storm. Berend peers into the darkness, putting his hand over his good eye to keep the rain out. Water trickles under the patch over the other eye. A long few minutes pass before a horse and rider come into the light from the chapel windows: an aging gray mare carrying a woman dressed in a faded black traveling coat.
The woman dismounts and looks at Berend from under her broad-brimmed felt hat, also black. Her skirts are tucked up into her girdle to show a worn pair of boots. She studies him with a look of vague confusion for a moment before speaking. “Isabel Rainier,” she introduces herself. “I’m the Sentinel.”
That much is obvious, from her blacks to the fact that she’s out on the blue field in a storm, to the silver pin on her coat in the shape of an arched gateway. Interesting, that she’s a woman—most holy warriors, the few that still exist, are men. There’s an arming sword at her hip, short with a simple swept hilt, among other objects obscured by the darkness and her skirts. Berend wonders if the weapon is decorative, made of silver or some such nonsense, or if she can wield it.
“Berend Horst,” he says, with a tip of his hat. A bow would take him out of the small rectangle of shelter by the door, and he’s not willing to do that at the moment. “You’re here for Mikhail Ranseberg, I assume? He was my friend.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” says Isabel. The words are gentle, but there’s a hint of rote repetition about them. She ties the mare’s bridle to the post supporting the overhang. “Is he inside?”
Berend moves out of her way, and she removes her hat and enters the chapel. He thinks he can smell the body again, and hesitates before following. He’s seen—and smelt—a lot of death in his time, but the treatment of Mikhail’s poor corpse is affecting him more than he expected it would.
He takes one last drink to steel himself and pours the rest out into the mud, a libation for his comrade. Let’s get this over with.
Inside, Brother Risoven is burning incense. The candles cast a wavering, eerie light, and the monk’s shadow is tall and spindly against the chapel walls. Berend puts his hat on the pew closest to the door, careful not to crush the feather, and crosses the short distance to the back room where the body is being kept. Mulhy is standing just outside, behind where the candles are placed, his arms crossed over his chest and a look of fear and bewilderment on his young face.
Berend takes a breath and smells mostly incense. If this is what it takes to find justice for Mikhail, then he’s going to bear witness to it. He steps over the threshold.
“Stop!” Isabel commands. “Don’t touch that.”
Berend comes to a halt. There are two lines of chalk in front of his feet, a pair of concentric rings circling the room. At the center is the table where a shape that isn’t much like a man lies covered by a sheet.
“Can I stay here, then?” he asks, a little annoyed.
Isabel looks up from where she is chalking symbols onto the floor between the circles. “I suppose. Don’t break the circle.”
Her coat and hat lie over a chair in one corner of the room, outside the diagram. The hilt of her sword shines in the candlelight from underneath. Berend expected she would move the body, perhaps placing it in order instead of leaving it in a heap, but it looks the same as when he arrived here hours ago. On the table beside it lie an iron handbell and an octavo-sized book bound in black leather. The same symbol of an archway is embossed on the front cover.
She stands up, her drawing finished, and begins snuffing out the candles in the room. She’s a mousy sort of woman, tall and thin, with large eyes and a pointed face. It’s hard to tell her age; Berend guesses thirty-five. Her dark hair is pulled back into one long braid, heavy with rainwater.
The last candle goes out, and the room is black. Berend can’t see anything.
Isabel seems to have no difficulty in the darkness. A match flares to life, and she lights a single candle of black wax, setting it in something like a small cup made of branches of wrought iron. It sputters, causing the shadows to bend and waver, before it burns steadily.
She picks up the book and opens it. With her other hand, she takes the bell and rings it once, a clear, piercing note. The sound fills the room, and Berend finds himself following its reverberations with rapt attention, unable to turn away.
“In the name of Isra, mother of creation,” Isabel recites, not looking at the text in her hand, “and of Alcos, king and father, and of Ondir, lord of the gates: I call the name of Mikhail Ranseberg. Hark to me and speak!”
The bell rings again, and in the small, still room the echoes fade to silence. Berend hardly dares to breathe. There is no sound but his own pulse in his ears.
Then, there is a deafening, distorted scream.
It’s almost a human voice, but not quite—it is like metal scraping against metal, like an animal being slaughtered. It is many voices, all at once, so loud the entire city must be able to hear it. Mulhy covers his ears with his hands. Berend holds his arms stiffly at his sides, trying to endure.
Isabel takes a startled step back. She rings the bell again, but the horrible din is too loud to hear it. The room begins to flicker with an eerie white light. There are shapes in it—first half of a face, its mouth open and twisted in terror, then an outstretched hand, and then the meeting of a shoulder and a neck, muscles straining. It might be Mikhail, but there are only flashes, and it’s impossible to tell for certain.
Isabel rings the bell once more, but nothing happens. The screaming continues, shaking the building, and Berend finally relents and puts his hands over his ears. It does almost nothing to block out the sound.
Finally, Isabel reaches out and puts the candle out. The room is plunged into darkness and blessed silence.
Berend’s ears ring. He swallows, and it helps a little. When he can breathe again, he says, “I take it that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Brother Risoven brings a light, squinting through his thick lenses. “Is everyone all right?”
“I think so.” Isabel has bell and book clutched to her chest as she stares at the body under its sheet. She shakes her head and places the objects down. “A broom, if you would, Brother.”
Risoven sets the lantern down and hurries off.
“What does this mean?” Berend asks. “What just happened?”
“I don’t know,” says Isabel. “I’ve done this ritual hundreds of times. That’s never happened before.”
Berend follows Mulhy back out to the chapel as Isabel sweeps away the chalk on the floor. She’s not going to try it again, then, he realizes.
His hands are shaking. He clenches his fists to stop them.
It’s probably for the best. He never had much faith in magic. Occasionally, one of Isra’s priestesses could mend a broken bone with a few words and some light, but mostly they just used time and a splint, like everyone else. A Sentinel of Ondir wouldn’t be any different. Berend will just have to find the madman who did this to Mikhail himself.
But if the magic had failed, nothing would have happened, he reminds himself. Instead, there was—whatever that had been.
Her task done, Isabel comes out to the chapel. “I need you to tell me everything about where and how you found him,” she says.
Berend says nothing. This is a waste of time, though he’s careful not to show that he thinks so.
“He was in the Shell District,” says Mulhy. He taps the spiral patch on his vest, the marker of which constabulary he belongs to. “At the center of the old plaza. I found him like that, just at sundown.”
“Did anyone see what happened?” asks Isabel.
Mulhy shakes his head. “No one has come forward.”
Impossible, Berend thinks. There had to have been witnesses. If Mulhy is going to be as useless as the Sentinel, he’ll have to find them for himself as well.
“Strange,” Isabel says. “Can you take me there?”
“I—I guess so,” Mulhy stammers.
“I think it would help.” She doesn’t sound certain. A troubled look crosses her face as she brushes chalk dust from her skirt.
“Shall we, then?” Berend interjects. If there’s nothing more to do here, they might as well go before the murderer can run farther than he likely has already, and there’s no way Berend is going to stay behind. He fetches his hat and places it carefully on his head.
Isabel raises one brow at him. “I’ll get my coat,” she says.
The Shell District is just inside Mondirra’s wall. It’s a sprawling, ugly stretch of the city, the original houses and shops built over with layers of additions and lean-to shacks. Once, the mosaic-tiled plaza was open and clear, and the spiral pattern from which the district got its name was polished every second day, but those days are long past. The marble tiles are grimy now with the dirt of centuries, and only a small circle at the center remains free of dubious architecture.
This is where Mulhy found Mikhail. There are two other constables standing watch there, holding lanterns and yawning. At the very center of the spiral is a smear of blood. It isn’t much, considering the state the corpse was in, even considering the rain. Berend remembers the bloodless gray of Mikhail’s flesh and suppresses a shudder.
Whoever did this hadn’t cut him apart here. He must have been brought here from somewhere else, which means there might be a trail.
The storm has passed, and there’s only a fine mist of rain. Isabel is walking around the small space, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, looking at the spot of blood with her brows furrowed in concentration. Mulhy stands by awkwardly. Berend ignores them both and tries the first cramped, winding path out.
It’s dark, and the rain hasn’t done much for the city filth. Berend walks all the way to the edge of the old plaza and sees nothing that might be a bloody trail back to the murderer’s hiding place. With the buildings leaning into each other, pressed close together, he can’t see very far at all. Maybe someone could drag the pieces of a body through here without being seen, if he were careful.
There’s nothing here. Berend sighs and turns on his heel to head back to the center. He’ll try a different alley.
Something wet, glistening in the dim gas street lamps, catches his eye. There’s a smear of something dark and dank-smelling down the side of the building to his left. It goes from the ground all the way up the wall and under the width of the awning. On the other side, another line mirrors it, almost as if they were painted.
Berend bends in close and sniffs. There’s a distinct smell of old blood, and something else, like damp and rot.
“Sentinel,” he says, loud enough to be heard across the plaza. “You should look at this.”
Isabel runs over in a flurry of stiff wool skirts, a hand on her hat to keep it from falling. “What is it?”
Berend indicates the lines with gesture.
She examines the wall at eye level and then tilts her head back to look up, holding her hat in place.
“What do you make of it?” Berend asks. For himself, he has no idea.
Isabel takes a step back away from the plaza’s edge, and then another. “Look,” she says. She points to another line, down the side of the next building.
Berend goes to examine it and sees another, up the side of the rickety lean-to a few feet away. This one is connected to the previous house by a line on the ground. He finds another, and another, and before he realizes it he’s walked half the circumference of the old plaza, Isabel at his heels.
What is this? Is this Mikhail’s blood? There’s so much of it.
“It’s a circle,” Isabel says. “It must go over the roofs, as well, or it did before the rain.”
It’s enormous. You’d have to be a hundred feet in the air to see the whole thing, Berend realizes. “Why?” he asks aloud.
“I don’t know.” Isabel points to a symbol, painted of the same substance on the inside of one of the vertical portions of the circle. It looks a bit like a pair of many-branched candelabra, joined at the stems, painted with a fine, small brush. The roof must have protected it from the rain, as it looks clearer than the circle itself.
“What is it?” Berend says. He sounds calm, at least to his own ears. He certainly doesn’t feel it. The blood-and-rot smell is stronger here, and there’s a wrongness to it that makes the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end.
“A sigil, of some sort,” Isabel says. “I don’t recognize it, but it might be significant.”
“I suppose we should inform the constable.” He’d like not to be looking at this horrifying diagram, the sooner the better.
Mulhy is just as perplexed as Berend is. He hadn’t seen it, he says, when he began his patrol this evening. He turns to Isabel, who only shakes her head.
“I’ll have to look into it,” she says. “I can ask at the temple in the morning.”
There isn’t much to be done now, and Berend is exhausted. He will have to see about Mikhail’s funeral tomorrow. He’ll go back to his bed in the Fox and Dove Inn—it’s far too late to call on Lady Breckenridge now, and Berend isn’t sure he’d be in the mood anyway.
As he turns to leave the Shell District, he takes one last look at the bloody lines painted on the walls. Tiny little red-black growths, like branches or fingers, have begun to sprout from them, reaching out into the air.
Berend walks in the center of the street, well away from the buildings, on his way back to the Fox and Dove.
Thanks for reading! I’m very excited to begin this new project, and I hope you’ll join me on this journey.
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