Warning
The young man stands slowly, rolling his shoulders, as though the somber temple of Ondir is a country park and he’s contemplating concluding his picnic and heading home. He walks unhurried to the end of the row and starts up the center aisle, his hands in the pockets of his fine trousers and his polished riding boots sending a slow rhythm to echo against the dome.
Berend stands, dragging Isabel up with him. His free hand goes first to his pistol—it’s empty, Isabel remembers, because he shot the animated corpse in the morgue and hasn’t had a chance to reload—and then to the hilt of his sword. His cloak hangs over his elbow, hiding the weapons from view.
She twists her wrist out of Berend’s grasp. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she whispers.
Berend doesn’t answer, watching as the Belisia boy makes his way closer. Geray stays in his seat, observing with interest, probably hoping he’ll see Berend harmed in some way. For all his talk of sin and righteousness and the favor of the gods, he’s a small, vindictive man, even in death.
Isabel lowers her eyes and shapes her face into a neutral half-smile, a quiet, nonthreatening acknowledgement of a fellow worshipper in a place of mourning. Now that someone is in earshot, she can only hope that Berend will do the same, and they can manage to get out of the church without causing yet another incident.
Of all the strange things that have happened lately, Berend being able to read her mind isn’t one of them, and he maintains his ready posture. His left hand reaches for hers, but Isabel stays out of reach. She would like to be able to move under her own power.
Belisia stops at the end of their row and favors Berend with a raised brow and a contemplative purse of his lips. “You’re the mercenary, I presume? Horst, was it?”
“And you’re Hybrook Belisia,” Berend answers in a low growl.
There’s that knife-blade smile again. “I’m surprised you recognize me. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of your acquaintance.” His face is coldly pleasant, but his words drip with contempt. Isabel has met his type before, answering complaints of a wayward ancestral ghost in a manor large enough to house half of Mondirra. The vampire she and her teacher rooted out so many years ago had once been of the same sort, for at least one of its centuries of unlife, but it had been reduced to skulking in caves by the time Isabel had met it. All are equal in Ondir’s realm, the Sentinels used to say to each other behind the well-dressed backs of their haughty benefactors. None of their wealth will go with them.
“Bessa Kyne’s ghost showed me your face,” Berend says. “She wanted someone to know what you’d done.”
Belisia’s smile doesn’t falter. It might as well be carved of stone. “And now someone knows,” he says. “Unfortunately, that someone is a washed-up sellsword whose word means next to nothing.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here threatening me.” Berend gestures to the altar. “In the house of a god, no less.”
“No one’s threatening anyone,” Belisia says, putting on an affronted look.
“Then what are you doing here?”
Belisia smiles again, and he almost looks genuinely delighted. His hands remain in his pockets. He could be concealing a knife—not much of a match for Berend’s saber. A priest wouldn’t throw him out, even if they weren’t all busy with the constabulary, but they’d certainly disapprove.
“I just heard you were here and thought I’d stop by and introduce myself,” he says. “I’m offended you thought I had hostile intentions.”
“You’ll forgive me if the hired assassin had any effect on my expectations,” Berend snarls.
In the atrium, Isabel can see Father Pereth reenter the temple and close the doors behind him. He crosses the space under the dome and heads down the hall toward his study, and the other priests with him disperse. Two go down to the morgue, and a third, tall with a shaved head and wire-rimmed lenses, goes toward the funerary offices. Some decision has been reached, and Isabel can only hope that it’s one where she and Berend get to leave.
“You see, here’s the thing,” Belisia says. “You know what you know, and you’re intent on telling the whole city. Fine. You’re a free citizen. But no one cares. You could tell every constable in every district, and they’d do nothing. They don’t care about a serving girl. Even if they did, they know better than to bring a charge against my family. And since you were so kind as to remove the spirit from our house, you don’t even have any evidence.”
Berend takes a steadying breath, but his hand doesn’t leave his sword. “Are you finished?”
“Quite,” says Belisia. “I hope you have a fine day.”
With that, he stalks out of the sanctum, keeping his same meandering pace as he walks beneath the dome and makes his way to the atrium. After a brief exchange of words with one of the remaining priests by the door, he steps out into the sunlight.
“Bastard,” Berend mutters. He lets go of his sword at last, straightening his cloak with both hands. “If it’s the last thing I do, I hope I see him thrown in the tower dungeon.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” says Isabel. “But at least it sounds like they’re not going to try to kill you anymore.” It’s a small relief, but having one fewer obstacle in her way while the world falls apart is a blessing. She’ll accept it without complaint.
Berend laughs, mirthless and dejected. “Not likely. He was only here to show me that he knows where I am and can come and go as he pleases. If his family were going to leave me alone, they’d do just that. There’d be no need to bother telling me.”
Well. So much for one problem being solved. Isabel wants nothing more than to sleep, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
“On the positive side, it means they are actually worried about their reputation,” Berend says in a tone of forced optimism. “If my word was as worthless as he claims, they would just let me live.”
Isabel fails to see how the looming threat of another assassin is a positive, but she lets it lie. “I’d like to leave this place,” she says. “Is there somewhere we can go where he won’t find you again?”
Silently, Geray gets up and walks through the pews toward the altar, passing into the wall at the back of the sanctum. It’s still unsettling to watch a ghost move freely through the church. He shouldn’t have been able to even enter. If only Father Pereth could have seen him—his very presence is all the proof he would need that something is very, very wrong.
Maybe he’s right, and Isabel has gone mad from exhaustion and stress. Berend can’t see Geray, and neither could Brother Risoven. There have been a lot of other things that both have seen in the past two days, but wouldn’t it be so much easier if Isabel could just wake up from this compounding nightmare? She’d accept confinement in the Temple of Isra if that meant the dead weren’t wandering and Ondir would return.
“I’m not sure,” Berend says. “Obviously, they’ve got informants. I just wish I knew where and how many.”
So they won’t be able to hide, not really. Not unless they find out, which seems more impossible with each passing second. “There’s got to be somewhere they won’t dare to attack you. Noble families play games. Those games have rules, right?” Isabel says. “What about your friend? Lady Breckenridge?”
“Not a chance. She lives alone. I’m not leading an assassin to her doorstep, especially one the Belisias can just disavow and pretend they don’t know.” He sighs again, sounding as tired as Isabel feels.
“Wait.” Berend reaches into one pocket and produces a wrinkled card, unfolding it and holding it out to Isabel.
The handwritten ink has blurred, and the chapel’s dim light doesn’t help. She squints at it. “Who is ‘Enryn Marner’?”
Berend turns the card around and gives it a dubious look. “I don’t know. But he’s a friend of Herard Belisia, the older brother of the charming gentleman you just met, recently disowned and afflicted by a burst of conscience.”
Isabel glances between Berend and the smeared address. “And you think this attack of conscience is enough to protect you from the rest of his family?” She’s never met the man, but she suspects that the disownment and the change of heart are related, and his parents need only rescind the one for the other to follow. Noble families play games, even within their own ranks.
“Do you have a better idea?” Berend asks.
She doesn’t. She shakes her head and shrugs, admitting defeat. What’s the worst that could happen? A knife in the dark isn’t the worst way to cross over, and maybe Isabel would do more good as a spirit than a living person. She’s not about to hasten that transition, but it’s worth noting. Right now, she can’t move freely through the nether world without hours of ritual that most likely won’t work, and the chance of losing her way in the mass of human souls and never finding her body again grows with each passing hour.
Geray stalks in from the left-hand wall. The hollows of his eyes and in the center of his chest have darkened and spread, and he’s translucent enough that Isabel can see lines of mortar through his body.
“You’ll be happy to know that the constabulary is currently engaged in a discussion with several brothers about the body in the morgue,” he says. “There are two doors leading out to the cemetery that are, for the moment, unwatched.”
He adds in a weak, bitter murmur: “This place is too damned big. I suppose this is where the offerings to the church of Ondir have all gone.”
Isabel takes one look around the low, modest building, its single dome, and the plain masonry walls. It’s no temple of Alcos, and Geray knows that. He used to be a postulant there. “This way,” she says to Berend, and heads up the leftmost aisle.
It’s been years since she walked the back corridors of this temple—the priests’ living quarters, the archive, and now, presumably, a printing press where some of the endless pamphlets against the Resurrection Act are being produced. The seven churches in Mondirra had shared a press, housed in the church of Mella, when Isabel had been an apprentice. Still, she opens the door tucked away into the corner behind the altar and finds herself in a familiar hallway. Its lamps are dark, and the windows are narrow slits, casting regular lines of cold light onto the gray stone floor.
The first door is the archive. Somewhere inside, just maybe, is a dusty old scroll that would tell her why Ondir has vanished, taking his gate with him. She doesn’t have time to look, much less parse some ancient scribe’s handwriting and translate a dead language she hasn’t studied in a decade and a half. Maybe she can come back, if she waits long enough and shows enough contrition. Any moment now, Pereth will realize that even he can’t quiet the body in the morgue. Isabel doesn’t expect an apology, but sanctuary and some time to study would be enough for her.
The next door opens out into the noontime sun. Berend follows her out, and Geray comes after him, dragging his feet across the threshold.
“You could thank me for scouting ahead, Sentinel,” he complains. “It wasn’t easy.”
I tend to pit my protagonists against cosmic forces or their own frailty, but occasionally I try my hand at a villain you love to hate. Thanks for reading!
Space Whales Press 
2 thoughts on “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Seventeen”