The Living
“You’re bleeding,” Isabel says.
It takes a moment for Berend to notice she’s spoken. He walks half a step behind her, for a better view of the Temple District, and is doing everything in his power to keep his hands clear of his weapons. Every new pilgrim who comes into his field of vision makes his hands twitch. Someone like Belisia might not have hired only one assassin, and the gods only know what sort of horrible magic the murderer has at his disposal. Could a spirit be following Berend now? Would he be able to tell?
He looks at his shoulder. The thrown knife was sharp, and it left a clean line through both fabric and flesh—easy enough to mend in both instances, but he’s bled quite a lot. The growing stain is almost as red as his cloak and already the breadth of two hands. Ruining his best white shirt pales in comparison to everything else that has occurred today, but still, it stings.
“Are you all right?” Isabel asks. She stops and turns to him, her brows furrowed in concern under the shade of her hat.
Berend gives a dismissive gesture, and the cut twinges as he moves his arm. “The Belisias doubted my commitment to my contract,” he says. “They hired someone to make sure I stayed quiet. He and I came to an agreement.”
Isabel’s eyes go wide. “They sent a man to kill you?”
“I wasn’t going to mention it.” He shrugs with his uninjured shoulder. “We have enough to be concerned about now. I’d forgotten about the cut.”
She nods, slowly, and turns to walk to the temple of Ondir, quickening her pace. Berend struggles to keep up. Exhaustion tugs at his heels and weighs down on his chest. He’d like a hot meal and a bath, and then an early bedtime. Surely his troubles wouldn’t be as heavy after a good night’s rest.
We can’t all get what we want, he says to himself, and wonders what voice from his past he hears in the words.
They arrive at the temple of Ondir, at the bottom of the hill. Isabel does not take him up the stairs to the main door, but to a paved and carefully swept path around the temple and through the expansive graveyard. A single door, carved of dark wood with windows of blue glass set in a half-circle at the top, stands at the end of the transept.
It’s unlocked. The room within is empty, but the lamps are lit, as are several of a stand of candles against the far wall.
“Sit down,” Isabel says. She removes her hat and tucks it under her arm.
Berend looks around the room. It looks a bit like the place in the chapel on the blue field where Brother Risoven kept Mikhail’s body. A shelf holds linens and bottles of ink, and there is a human shape under a sheet on one of the three tables. The faint scent of decay hangs in the air.
There aren’t any chairs. He chooses the table farthest from the body and lays his cloak on it, followed by his sword belt and pistol.
Isabel is at the shelf, lifting sheets and moving jars around. “The shirt as well,” she says over her shoulder.
Berend stares at her. He’s convinced he must have misheard. “What?”
She comes over to the table and sets down a roll of bandages, a spool of thread, a sharp silver needle, and a jar of what smells like grain alcohol that was brewed in a tub on a less-than reputable ship. “The shirt,” she says again. “I can’t see the cut properly.”
“You’re going to stitch me up,” he says flatly, glancing between the needle and the body on the other table, “here?”
Isabel places her hat beside Berend’s effects and begins unbuttoning her coat. “I’m no priestess of Isra, but I’ll do my best. The shirt, please.”
He doesn’t think he needs stitches, but he can’t tell for all the blood. His hands find the buckles at his side and he undoes them one at a time, aware that he’s stalling. It’s suddenly far too intimate, in this silent, candlelit room, though he hasn’t gotten to the contested shirt yet. He looks away from Isabel—it seems like the polite thing to do, though she too is fully clothed. His eyes find the covered body again, and he grimaces.
He sees the black coat fall on top of his cloak and hears Isabel’s boots on the stone floor as she walks away. With his armor off, he looks up again. There’s a basin by the door that he didn’t see on his way in, and she’s scrubbing her hands in rhythmic circles, drawing patterns in soap over her palms and up her forearms. Berend is reminded of the bones in the chapel and the symbols Brother Risoven was drawing. He has the sinking feeling that he’s the first living person to be worked on in this room.
Isabel dries her hands on a thin white towel, folds it back up with reverence, and comes back to Berend, looking at him expectantly.
When he doesn’t move, she says, “I’m not taking you to see the high priest with an open wound. Besides, you wanted to confront the necromancer, didn’t you? You’d best not be bleeding when he’s around.”
“Why not?” asks Berend. “Can he do magic with my blood?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure. But you saw the Shell District. I wouldn’t risk it.”
Berend banishes the image of bloody fungus growing from his arm and attempts a smile. “It sounds like you’re reconsidering bringing me along.”
“I’m not,” she says.
With a sigh, Berend tugs at the laces of his shirt. “I think you underestimate me, Sentinel.”
She doesn’t answer. She opens the jar of disinfectant, and the sharp smell fills the room. As strong as it is, Berend isn’t sure it will be enough to let him forget that the needle was almost certainly last used on a corpse. He pulls his shirt over his head and sits down on the last empty space on the table.
The cut is oozing blood again. It might be deeper than he thought, but what’s one more scar to add to his collection, now rather on display? This would be the point where the lady present comments on my heroism and ability to cheat death, he thinks, and it isn’t funny in his own mind, so he says nothing. He can feel Isabel’s eyes on him, but when he looks, her face is dispassionate and unreadable.
It burns like a hot iron when an alcohol-soaked cloth touches the cut. Berend bites back a grunt of pain. “You’re right,” he says through his teeth. “You’re no priestess of Isra.”
“Hmm,” is all Isabel says in reply.
“Have you ever done this before?” he asks, and does not say to the living. The dead, he supposes, don’t complain.
She looks up, and her eyes meet his for a moment before she turns back to her work. “Yes. I would imagine I’ve done about as much field medicine as you have.”
“Well, that’s reassuring.” The sting has subsided, though it hasn’t gone away. Berend supposes that means the disinfectant is working. “So you’ve faced this sort of thing before. Necromancers, I mean.”
“It is what we’re trained for.” She wipes up the last of the blood and sets the rag aside.
Berend shivers. He can feel the draft in the room prickling at his skin as the alcohol dries. “I might not be as well-versed in dark magic as you are, but I am an accomplished fighter,” he says.
The needle glints in the candlelight as Isabel draws the thread through. “I’m sure you are.”
“I don’t see why you think I’ll be a hindrance,” Berend says. His next argument is cut off by the sudden introduction of the needle to his skin. As if it will prove his point, he grits his teeth and doesn’t make a sound.
“You wouldn’t be a hindrance, you’d be dead,” says Isabel. “Wherever he’s hiding, he’s had enough time to perform any number of rituals. Your sword is no good against magic, and even less good against an enemy you can’t see.”
She pulls the thread taut. “I saw him, last night,” she says quietly. “He snuck up on me, and he disappeared before I could catch him. He could have killed me, and that was on the street, away from the place of his power.”
Another stitch, and then another. The needle is sharp, and Isabel’s hand is steady, but it still hurts. Her other hand rests on the muscle of Berend’s arm, holding him still.
“Do you know who he is?” Berend asks, in the effort to distract himself from the feeling of the thread being drawn through his skin. It isn’t painful so much as it is unnerving.
Isabel shakes her head. “I couldn’t see his face. I don’t know anyone here, anyway.”
Damn. Berend knows he couldn’t have done better, but he wishes he had been there—both for the chance at vengeance, and for the distinct possibility that Isabel might have not made it to be here, sewing up his wound.
“Though he might be Lucian Warder’s research partner,” Isabel continues. “I went to see Warder’s uncle, before. He didn’t give me a name, but he said he used to be an acolyte in the church of Alcos.”
“That can’t be a coincidence.”
There is a tug as Isabel breaks the thread off. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what his name is. With the help of some clerics, I can find his base of operations and clear it out. We’ll dispel any of his existing magic, put any spirits to rest, and deal with him. You have other things to worry about,” she says with a nod to the cut.
Berend looks at it. The stitches are neat and even, and the bloody line of it is all but invisible. She does good work. Even on the living. It might not even scar.
“Well, I discouraged the first visitor,” he says. “ I’d guess I have a couple of days before the next one comes a-calling. I’m going with you.”
Isabel sighs. He can feel her breath against his shoulder. “You’re nothing if not stubborn, Mr. Horst. It might do you good against the necromancer, but I don’t want to take that chance,” she says. With gentle hands and an almost reverent attention, she begins wrapping the bandage around his arm. “I would be remiss in my duties if anything were to happen to you.”
“That’s the strangest way anyone has ever told me they would miss me,” Berend says.
“Hmm,” Isabel replies, tying off the bandage.
Berend bends his elbow and rolls his shoulder. His movement isn’t restricted, and neither is the flow of blood—maybe Isabel does have experience working on the not-yet deceased. It’s unfortunate that she’s not the one with something to prove here. She seems confident that she can find the spot that he can’t.
She steps in close beside him, her skirts brushing against the top of his boot, and gathers up the equipment.
“Look,” Berend says, and she does. It might be the first time he’s seen her face clearly, without the hat or something else to distract him. There is a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. He reaches out to grab her by the arm, but decides against it, and leaves his hands where they are.
“You have your sacred duties, and I have mine,” he continues. “And mine include not allowing someone who dismembered a Son of Galaser and injured his soul to live. You can take me with you, or I will find my own way. That I can promise you.”
Isabel holds his gaze, and a crease forms between her brows as she looks at him. Whatever she finds in his face makes her look away. “It’s the high priest’s decision, not mine. If you’re feeling better, we should go to him.”
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