Affliction
The body breathes in dry, rattling sobs, forcing air through collapsed lungs and a desiccated throat. It lurches forward blindly, rather like a garden slug, the sheet tangling its legs and covering its sightless face. The one free arm gropes its way forward, long, bruised fingers grasping at nothing.
Berend draws his pistol, levels the barrel at where he’s pretty sure the back of the corpse’s skull pushes against its shroud, pulls back the hammer, and fires.
The sound is like a knife to both ears. Isabel cries out in surprise, her hands flying up over her face.
“What are you doing?” she demands.
A ragged hole has formed in the sheet, and flecks of black blood and gray matter spatter the cloth and the tiled floor around it. Pride flares in Berend’s chest—he’s still a crack shot at short range—but it’s short-lived. The corpse inches forward, its searching hand scraping broken nails on the floor. A high, wavering sound rings in Berend’s ears, and his heart hammers a rapid accompaniment.
Louder than both sounds is the beat of a fist against the outside door. “What’s going on in there?” the watchman on the other side shouts. “Open up!”
Isabel’s eyes go wide. “Put that away,” she says through her teeth. “Help me.”
Berend obeys, returning the gun to its holster. Together, they move a table to prevent the guards’ entry, giving the body in the sheet a wide berth. Its hand follows their footsteps, but it lacks the strength to tear its way free, the wits to untangle itself, or both.
Stupid, stupid. Berend knows that a bullet won’t stop a reanimated corpse, not while the spirit giving it life is still around. What are you doing, Horst? Trying to prove you’re still useful, even though the world’s falling apart? You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re going to get Isabel killed.
He shakes his head. Admonishing himself, even if he deserves it, isn’t going to help. Eventually, the watchmen are going to break in, and the body is going to get itself free and use all the strength left in its decaying muscles to tear them limb from limb. Its hand finds the leg of another embalming table, and its fingers clamp down, digging shallow gouges into the wood.
Berend approaches the table from the other side. It’s heavy oak, worn smooth and stained in questionable patches by gods know what sort of substances. He places both hands under the long edge, bends his knees, and lifts.
With a crash, the table tips, pinning the corpse from shoulder to hip. Bones crunch under its weight, and more dark fluids soak into the shroud. Now Berend can smell it, over the disinfectant permeating the room and the tang of gunpowder—old blood and rot and human waste. Death, to Berend, smells like fresh blood and smoke; this is decay and filth, the warning that any water nearby is no good and sickness lingers in the air.
Isabel tugs at his sleeve. He lets her pull him to the other door, the one that leads into the cathedral, before he shakes himself free. Her fist on the door is twice as fast and half as loud as the insistent knocking behind them. With her face up to the keyhole, she shouts, “Let us in, please!”
The guards leave the door. Berend doesn’t need to understand what their muffled voices are discussing to know that they’re planning to fetch a battering ram. And now that he’s immobilized the corpse, they’ll have no trouble getting right to arresting him and Isabel.
Excellent work, Horst.
“Sentinel?” A shaky voice comes in through the door. “Is that you?”
Isabel’s shoulders drop in something resembling relief. “Brother Risoven?” she says. “The guards are coming. Please hurry.”
Risoven doesn’t answer, and Berend has what feels like a full minute to think that he’s just going to leave them here for the watch to pick up before the lock turns and the door cracks open. A pair of magnified eyes blinks at him from the hallway beyond.
“Come inside,” the old monk says. “Are you hurt? Quickly, now.”
Isabel nudges Berend forward with a gentle hand on his shoulder. With one last look at the broken body in its shroud, she shuts the door behind them.
Risoven locks it again with a heavy iron key that disappears into one faded black sleeve. Just as he does, the frame shakes. The watch has begun to batter down the door.
“I suppose I should inform the high priest,” Risoven says, with a tone of mild concern that one might use to observe that mice have gotten into one’s pumpkin patch. He’s afraid—his eyes are wide even considering the lenses, and his bushy brows form a worried crease above the bridge of his nose—but Berend supposes that decades of counseling the grieving has been fair practice for at least sounding calm. He feels a pang of envy. If he tries to speak, he’s certain it will come out as a panicked, nonsensical jumble.
“I’ll do it,” Isabel says. “I have to speak with him anyway. It’s important.”
She doesn’t elaborate, and Risoven doesn’t ask. If there ever was a church that could take the absence of their god in stride, it would be Ondir’s. Maybe Berend had been wrong to think that Isabel was about to break down. She looks fine, except for the twitch along her jaw that tells him she’s grinding her teeth.
But she doesn’t tell Risoven what she saw. It seems like he ought to know, and he’s the only other soul in this hallway, except for the ghost animating the body in the morgue and maybe Arden Geray, wherever he’s gotten to—Berend never thought about how crowded things would get with the dead hanging around. Of course Isabel’s going to the high priest first. Church folk need their hierarchies.
“Father Pereth is very busy,” Risoven says, “but I’m sure, with the watch at our doorstep…” He lets the sentence die, unfinished, in the air.
“Thank you, Brother,” Isabel says, and then she’s off down the hall without so much as a warning, her boots striking a rapid staccato rhythm into the marble floor. Berend catches up to her in three long, exhausting strides. If he wasn’t the taller of the pair of them, and his legs weren’t longer than hers, she’d have left him behind on several occasions already.
Under the dome, she remembers to remove her hat. Three tall, middle-aged priests in starched black robes are in front of the great doors, blocking the entrance while doing a passable job at pretending they aren’t. The feather plume of a captain’s hat vibrates between the shoulders of two of the priests, as the watch tries to argue their way in this way while they bash their way in the side door. Two weeks ago, this would have been unthinkable. The city watch would never have dared to violate the sanctity of the temple.
Then again, Berend did just fire off a pistol inside the morgue, so he’s one to talk.
Father Pereth’s office smells of old books and charcoal ink. Berend prefers it to the miasma of chemicals and rot that filled the embalming chamber, but it annoys him anyway. Outside the polished doors, everything is falling apart, but here sits a quiet, untouched haven of ancient knowledge and sedate correspondence. It isn’t fair, and by all accounts the high priest is doing the best he can, but Berend allows himself the small indulgence of childish anger.
“Miss Rainier,” Pereth says. He glances up, and his almost colorless eyes flick between Isabel and Berend before returning to the letter on his desk. “I trust there’s a reason for this intrusion.”
Miss, Berend notices, not Sentinel. Right. Father Pereth had stripped Isabel of her title, as though that would help the worsening plague of ghosts or the ongoing conflict with the watch. All of a sudden, Berend feels less guilty about hating him.
Before Isabel can answer, Pereth continues, “Brother Risoven also noted your absence last night. I’m sure you’re going to explain that, as well.”
Isabel’s face falls, and she chews on her lower lip in a way that makes her look half her age. Her hands curl into fists at her sides. “I’m sorry, Father. It was important. And I’ve learned something you need to know.”
“And what could that be?” His tone is flat, and it’s more of an accusation than a question. He looks up at Isabel expectantly, his face as still as a carved effigy on a tomb.
She takes a breath. “Ondir is gone,” she says, “and the dead have nowhere to go. They are wandering, thousands of them, tens of thousands, and they cannot find the gate.”
Pereth frowns, and the thin line of his mouth opens to speak, but Isabel goes on before he can get the chance. “I am—I was—a Sentinel. I apprenticed under Sentinel Corday. I’m not a fool, Father, though I know what you think of me. You can do the ritual yourself—you’ll see it. The gate is no longer there.”
The high priest sighs. When he inclines his head, the hollows under his eyes are especially prominent. He’s probably not getting any more sleep than the rest of them, but Berend can’t bring himself to feel any sympathy.
“It’s true, all of it,” Berend says. “And more than that, the barrier, or whatever you want to call it, it’s weak. Even I could see it.”
Pereth looks up, as though he’s just realized Berend is here. “And who might you be?”
“Berend Horst.” He’s still wearing his hat, an enormous breach of decorum that isn’t helping his case. He takes it off and folds it under one arm in an attempt to recover his dignity. “Formerly of the Sons of Galaser, and now a free sword. I’ve been working with Sentinel Rainier on the matter of the necromancer.”
“Ah.” The syllable falls through the still air of the room, heavy with disdain. “Let me reassure you, Mr. Horst: whatever Miss Rainier has told you, the circumstances she describes are quite impossible.”
“She didn’t describe anything to me,” Berend argues. She could have been better about that, in fact. “I saw it myself.”
Pereth gives a languid nod, as if he expected Berend to say exactly that. “A layman can’t be expected to interpret the vision of the nether world. It requires years of training and discipline.”
“It seemed pretty clear to me.”
“Yes, I’m sure it did.” The high priest pushes his chair back from the desk, scraping its feet against the tile with a sound that makes Berend’s teeth hurt. He places the silver pen on the tabletop and stands, brushing imaginary dust from his ink-black robe. “Do you wish to help, Mr. Horst?”
Berend frowns. “Of course I do.” He’s deep in it now, though if he’s honest, he’d really rather not be. He could be recovering in Lady Breckenridge’s feather bed right now if he didn’t know the things he does, and if the small matter of the Belisias being out to kill him wasn’t a factor. Since he’s never been lucky, here he is. He’ll make the best of it.
“Then take Miss Rainier to the temple of Isra,” Pereth says, “and inform the sisters that she suffers from an affliction of the mind. If the gods are willing, she’ll make a quick recovery and be able to return to her position and her duties. Gods know we need every one of us in these trying times.”
Berend expects Isabel to argue, but she shuts her eyes and turns away, her shoulders hunched like she’s trying to fold herself in half.
He needs to get her out of here, for her sake and his own. He could punch the high priest, currently the most powerful man in this city block, right in his pale, expressionless face, and he imagines it would feel very satisfying to do. “Right, then. Thanks for your help, Father.”
Let him think that Berend’s just going to do as he’s told. It’ll keep him happy long enough for Berend to think of a better plan.
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