Temple
“I’m afraid I have to leave tomorrow,” Berend says.
Lady Breckenridge’s brows go up in a dubious expression. She holds up Berend’s old bandage, stained pink with less blood than he expected. “I don’t think you’re in any shape to go anywhere.”
He groans, a little louder than might strictly be justified, and props himself up on an elbow. The luxurious feather mattress adjusts to his new position. He’s going to miss it. He’ll miss Lady Breckenridge more. “I know, but I’ll live. I can’t let the Belisias find me here.”
“Belisias?” She scowls. “They wouldn’t dare.”
The fresh bandages wrapped around Berend’s chest are clean and neat, indistinguishable from the job the nurses did at the hospital. He’s never asked if Lady Breckenridge ever did a stint at a temple of Isra. “They’ll dare quite a bit, as it turns out,” he says. “The younger son murdered a serving girl, and his father doesn’t want it to get out.”
“I always thought there was something wrong with that boy.” She gets up and washes her hands in the floral-patterned ceramic basin, folding the dirty bandages into a towel.
Berend sits up and lifts his arms, testing his range of motion. “She haunted their estate for a while. If I can find the Sentinel again, I’ll have her take a look.”
Either Isabel, wherever she might be, can call up Bessa Kyne or she can’t—and Berend will know exactly what Warder’s device did to her.
“You don’t know where the Sentinel is?” Lady Breckenridge asks.
“The Shell District constabulary doesn’t know where she is.” Berend has a guess. In his experience, the Church always protects its own. What he doesn’t know is what could have happened at the little chapel that would involve arresting the old monk and closing off the area. Arden Geray is dead, he reassures himself once more. Whatever it is, at least she’s not in danger from him.
It’s probably some nonsense to do with the council decision and the subsequent protests. Berend decided early on not to get involved, and so far, he hasn’t had any cause to regret that decision. He’s not even a permanent resident of Mondirra. If one side or another wants him to care, they can damn well pay him for it.
“The Belisias wouldn’t risk losing my contacts in the spice trade,” Lady Breckenridge is saying. “You’re perfectly safe here.”
The young man they already hired to kill him, in all likelihood, neither knew nor cared about the spice trade. A better assassin, one willing to lie to a judge, wouldn’t care either, and Berend is sure a better assassin is coming—two of them, perhaps; one for him, and one for Herard.
“I’d rather you be safe,” he says. “And it’s not like I’m leaving forever. I’ll be back when things are quieter.”
Lady Breckenridge gives him a sidelong glance and a sly smile. “Wouldn’t it be better for you to stay? For my protection, of course.”
He laughs—briefly, because it still hurts. “I never mix business and pleasure. Besides, if you want a bodyguard, you’ll want someone in better shape.” Rest and good food have improved his condition, but he’s still not sure he can hold his own in a fight. All the more reason to fetch the Sentinel, then.
Essie comes to collect the rags, and Berend follows her to the dining room for the first full meal he’s had in days. There’s even dessert: apples and pears baked in a flaky crust, with enough spice to tell Berend that Lady Breckenridge’s partners in shipping have been having a very good year. She sends Essie home with a heavy covered dish.
Berend is going to miss this. Not for the first time, he considers asking Lady Breckenridge to marry him. It’s an idle thought—she has told him, more than once, that she intends never to marry again, so that her and her late husband’s fortunes remain in her hands. She likes Berend, and she might even love him, in her way, but he isn’t the sort she would make into a husband even if she were so inclined.
He tells himself he wouldn’t be happy living here all the time, though it’s hard to believe when his belly is full and there’s a feather mattress under him. Lady Breckenridge is very gentle with him that evening, and he spends the rest of the night in blissful, dreamless oblivion.
She’s gone again when Berend wakes. He suspects that, above all else, she wouldn’t have time for a husband if she wanted one.
He dresses and gathers his things, and he sets off once again into the city. It’s early enough that the air tastes of winter, and a cold wind comes in from the sea to the north. The city center is bustling as people leave for the port and the university and enter from the poorer residential districts, but the Temple District is dead silent. There are more constables here than Berend thought existed in the whole city. About half of them carry rifles. All of them wear pot helms and ill-fitting breastplates.
They’re nervous. The pair at the end of the street eye Berend nervously and clutch their guns. He lets them look over his weapons, and they wave him through. He’s not what they’re looking for.
More constables line the street on both sides, six or eight feet apart. Two more stand by the doorways of each of the temples. Berend can’t say what it is, but there is something about armed guards under the sweeping arches and high columns of the churches of Alcos and Isra that unsettles him. They used to have knights, he reminds himself, whole armies of them. The sharp-edged Temple of Galaser, at least, makes the constables in front of it a little less incongruous.
At the bottom of the hill, the Temple of Ondir is under heavy guard. There are constables among the gravestones, all up and down the stairs, and shoulder-to-shoulder in the street. Berend can’t see the patches on their uniforms under their armor, but they must have come from all over the city. There has never been any reason for the Temple District to field so many constables before.
Two of them stop Berend at the base of the stairs. One is middle-aged with his face covered in gray stubble, and the other, on his right, is barely twenty, beardless and hatchet-faced.
“No one is to enter the church of Ondir,” the elder says.
Berend holds his hands out away from his pistol and sword, making sure the constables can see them. “I have business with a Church official.”
The younger constable shakes his head. “It can wait until the situation is under control.”
“It really can’t,” says Berend. “My uncle has been waiting for burial for three days now. The flies are already on him.”
“Put him in the root cellar,” the first constable says, waving his hand as though Berend is a fly he’s swatting away.
“Haven’t got one. We live by the harbor.”
A scowl crosses the second constable’s young face. “That isn’t our problem.”
“Look,” says Berend, “my brothers are carting him over here today. Either you let me in to arrange his plot, or he’ll have to wait out here, flies and all, and let me tell you, the smell isn’t pleasant. It was gangrene that killed him.” He feels a bit sad for this uncle he has just imagined. The man’s brief life—all of two minutes—was a hard one.
The older constable grimaces. “Fine. But leave your weapons with us.”
“Don’t lose them.” Berend undoes his sword belt and hands it over. He considers inventing another uncle, a solicitor who would make sure he’s compensated for lost property, but he lets that idea lie. He’s pushed his luck enough already.
Relieved of his weapons, Berend mounts the stairs. As long as he’s back before the next shift change, and before they start suspecting that brothers carting a body aren’t coming, he should be able to recover them and disappear before anything looks suspicious.
Only dead faces, the skulls carved into the temple’s foyer walls, greet him as he enters. It’s surprisingly empty, even by its own standard. The inner chamber is utterly silent. Berend’s footsteps echo, and his breath feels as loud as a storm gale. The smell of incense, heavy and thick enough to fill the thin beams of sunlight coming from the upper windows with dust, makes him think of a funeral.
All the black-robed priests are elsewhere, even the novices in their plain gray habits. No one walks between the knightly sarcophagi under the dome. Berend hopes they haven’t all been thrown in the dungeon under the tower. He’s been down there before—once, to deliver a highwayman the watch had offered a small sum for someone to find—and it isn’t exactly spacious.
One solitary figure sits in the first pew, head bent under a familiar long, mouse-brown braid. Berend walks up the center aisle, avoiding making eye contact with the empty sockets staring down at him. He still doesn’t like this place.
“Sentinel,” he says, sliding into the seat beside her. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Isabel looks up. “Mr. Horst.”
She has shed her sharp black uniform with its wide collars and layered skirts for a plain dress, slate gray and much too large for her. The cuffed sleeves cover her hands, and the loose waist sits at her hips. She looks like an adolescent, awkward and gangling and wearing someone else’s clothing. The lines under her eyes betray her age, but Berend still doesn’t like it. After Geray’s house, he’d prefer never to have to see her vulnerable again, especially considering the condition he’s in.
“I tried to contact you at the chapel,” he says. “Things are looking pretty grim with the council, aren’t they?”
She doesn’t meet his eyes. “They’ve brought in constables from across the city. You probably saw them on your way in.”
“I certainly did.”
Silence stretches out between them, filling the macabre space and making Berend’s pulse sound like thunder in his ears. Sentinels aren’t a talkative lot, and Isabel is particularly taciturn, but something is wrong.
“So,” he begins, “I was wondering since the whole matter of the murderer is solved, you’d have some time to help me with something.”
Isabel lifts her head, looking at something in the direction of the altar that Berend can’t see. She lowers her gaze just as quickly and plucks at a stray thread on her dress. “I don’t know if I can.”
“I promise it won’t take more than a day,” says Berend. “Warder is still in the university hospital, and until he recovers, we won’t be able to figure out how his device works. What we can do is go to the Belisia estate and try to call up the ghost he and I sent away. If it works, I’ll have all the evidence I need to keep that family from having me killed. If it doesn’t, we’ll know something about Warder’s device.”
“I can’t,” Isabel says.
Berend turns, putting one knee up on the seat and his arm on the back of the pew. He’s still another arm’s length from Isabel. “Of course you can. The hard part will be sneaking onto the estate, but we can go after dark, and we’ll be in and out in no time.”
Now she looks him in the face. “No, Mr. Horst, I can’t. I haven’t been able to put down a ghost since Geray’s house.” Her voice breaks, almost like a sob, but her eyes are dry. “As of right now, I’m not a Sentinel. You’ll have to find someone else to help you.”
Berend can only stare at her. “That’s not possible,” he says. He’s certainly never heard of anything like that happening before, and he’s seen more than his share of strangeness.
But Isabel doesn’t lie. He suspects she doesn’t know how. She doesn’t even know how to make a joke, or even how to laugh at one.
She shrugs, holding out her empty hands, and looks at the floor again.
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