Departure
It’s nothing, Isabel tells herself. It’s a traveler’s tale, embellished with every telling until it’s unrecognizable as the original story. An entire village did not turn to metal overnight.
She’ll believe that anyone who chanced to be awake last night saw the red star fall. It had been bright as a jewel, burning like a distant bonfire through the sky of this world and of the next. But the rest? It would require a ritual from the old legends, a coven of mages made immortal by their own power, the sacrifice of dozens of innocents. The next part of the story would involve a holy warrior of the church of Alcos, in enchanted armor that shone like the sun and a sword that could cut through both flesh and lies, riding a winged steed into the place of their power.
Emryn Marner himself doesn’t seem to believe it. He eats his pie like a starving man—all men his age are starving—and doesn’t bring it up again. He and Berend take the tub down to the gutter and dump out the dirty water, and then he retreats to his room with his books. “There’s an exam next week,” he explains. “Though if the world’s ending, maybe I’ll get to miss it.”
“When I was a boy, my teacher said that one of the hells was just endless written exams, over and over, for all eternity,” says Berend.
Isabel shakes her head. The sixteen hells were mapped in the days when people still believed in holy warriors in shining armor and evil wizards hiding in towers in the desert, before most children even attended school, much less were tested on their ability to write, but she doesn’t correct him. Eating took the last of her strength, and she wants nothing more than to curl back up on Marner’s old sofa and go back to sleep.
With Emryn shut away with his books and two candles he fished out from underneath the couch, Berend sits down next to her with a heavy, exhausted sigh. “So,” he says. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel confesses. She’s been trying to come up with a plan all day, and she’s thought of nearly nothing. “We can’t stay here. There’s no room, and I’m sure he can’t afford to feed us for long. And then there are the Belisias.”
Berend leans back, dropping his head against the back of the couch. It sinks down into the aging stuffing. “Right. There are the Belisias.”
“We should probably leave the city,” she says. “I could try the church at Vernay. Someone there might know what to do.”
“Vernay is weeks away,” Berend argues, lifting his head to look at her. “We need to get Warder, and then figure out how to fix Mikhail and Bessa. Once we have that evidence, the Belisias will leave me alone.”
“It’s ten days’ ride, but I see your point.” She’d had a horse, though not a fast one. The old mare has either been repossessed by the church or wandered off to a farm outside Mondirra by now. Isabel hopes for the latter—a quiet retirement on a pasture, with small children to feed her apples and braid her mane, sounds better than the faithful horse would ever get otherwise—but in either case, there’s no way she can ride to Vernay or anywhere else.
Berend runs a hand through his hair and sighs again. “All right. I think we should go to the university hospital early tomorrow morning. We won’t know what to do until we figure out what Warder did. Maybe it’s related to…” He waves a hand at the window, indicating the sky and the city and the whole world outside of this small apartment, where the dead wake and their spirits wander. “To all this.”
“And if it’s not?” asks Isabel.
“Then we go from there. Maybe your high priest will have realized his mistakes by then, and we can go back to him.”
That doesn’t sound likely, but Berend does have a point: they can’t plan more than their next step. The thought fills Isabel with a creeping dread. Where will she sleep tomorrow night? Will she be able to eat enough tomorrow so that she can run to her next hiding place? She almost wishes she had gone to the temple of Isra, after all. Almost, but not quite.
“Get some sleep,” Berend says. He stands up with a groan. “We’ll head out before it gets light tomorrow.”
Isabel drags herself to her feet and points to the hollow she’s left in the couch. “I can take the floor. It’s only fair.”
“Nonsense. You’ll take the closest thing to a bed, and I will keep watch. After I ask our gracious host for a blanket or two.”
She’s too tired to argue with him. The couch creaks and the musty cushions embrace her like a lover. Her back will ache in the morning, but she can’t bring herself to care.
Geray’s ghost sits on a stack of books, glowering at her.
“What do you want?” she mumbles. The effort of talking hasn’t grown easier.
He pushes another book with one fog-colored toe, succeeding only in hiding his foot inside the thick text. “I would like to be free of you, Sentinel. I noticed that wasn’t part of your plans.”
“I’m getting to it.” Isabel puts an arm over her eyes. “There are more important things I have to do right now.”
“The gate is well and truly gone. You won’t be able to restore it on your own,” Geray says.
Without looking at him, Isabel can see his hollow-eyed expression of smug melancholy. She’s grown far too accustomed to his presence for her liking. “You don’t know that.”
“I think you’ll find I do.”
She lowers her arm and opens one eye. “You thought that tearing people limb from limb would make Alcos pleased with you. It was your spell that created the tether, anyway.”
He jabs a pale finger in her direction, trailing mist as he lifts his arm. “You disturbed the circle. This is your doing.”
“You should have thought of that before you tried to use Warder’s blood for your ritual.” A throbbing ache has formed between her eyes, as though someone is gently tapping her brow with a hammer. “You’re a necromancer. I’m a Sentinel. I’m sure you’ve read enough history to know what was going to happen.”
“You were a Sentinel,” Geray snarls.
The past tense should apply to him, as well, on account of him being quite dead, but he doesn’t mention that.
Berend comes in and unfolds a scratchy wool blanket, draping it over Isabel. It’s warm and heavy, woven of thick fibers in an uneven pattern, likely by hand. The edge makes her face itch, but it turns the lumpy couch into a proper bed, and it smells of the cedar chest where it must have been stored. Since Marner doesn’t have one in this small apartment, it’s the smell of his mother’s house, perhaps, or that of an enterprising young relative first learning to weave. It smells like someone’s home.
“Thank you,” Isabel manages to say, stifling a yawn.
Berend, pulling the curtains closed, looks over his shoulder. “I thought you were asleep.”
“Mm.”
The room falls dark, and Geray keeps his complaints to himself. The last thing Isabel sees before she drifts off to sleep is the dark hollows of his eyes following Berend back and forth. Berend can’t touch him, but he’s still wary. Isabel hopes the memory of the gunshot wound is painful. It isn’t kind of her, and she’s not supposed to take Ondir’s place and judge the dead, but she’s allowing herself this one small, exhausted indulgence. If the god of the dead returns–when he returns–she’ll ask for his forgiveness then.
She sleeps without dreaming. She’s barely closed her eyes before Berend is shaking her awake, and a candle in front of her eyes burns a brilliant spot into her vision. A thin band of gray predawn light peeks through the curtains, providing no illumination.
Isabel blinks and rubs at her eyes. She could sleep for another full day, if not a full year. Surely Berend hasn’t been awake all night. He did say he’d keep watch.
She crawls out of her blanket cocoon, and an early-morning chill bites through her clothes. It will be worse outside, but she’ll have to leave her coat–the most recognizable part of her Sentinel’s uniform–behind. Her fingers are stiff as she laces up her boots.
“To the hospital, then?” Berend whispers. Their gracious host has finally gone to bed, and the door to his room is shut. “Our good friend Warder is waiting.”
Isabel has spoken to Lucian Warder exactly once, or twice if she counts saying things in his direction while Geray was holding him hostage. It’s a stretch to call him a friend, much less a good one.
Berend takes her dubious look as a sign of encouragement. “We’ll clear my name, and then we’ll clear yours, and you can go back to the important task of fixing the world, or what have you.”
Either he did sleep last night, and that’s given him this confidence, or he’s so deprived of rest that he’s gone mad. Isabel doesn’t want any part of it, though she needs him to keep her from wrapping herself back up in the borrowed blanket again and sleeping until Marner throws her out. He’s an exceptionally generous young man, so she’d probably have a couple of days.
“It’ll be fine,” Berend says, more gently.
Isabel realizes she’s staring at him, her eyes wide in the dim light and her thoughts completely absent, a hollow-eyed gaze that might rival Geray’s. She worries she’ll fall asleep standing. “I’m sure it will,” she says, looking at the floor. It doesn’t sound convincing.
To keep from losing consciousness the next instant she stands still, she folds up the blanket and the rest of her clothing, placing them in a stack beside the couch. Maybe she’ll be back before Marner has to get rid of her things.
Berend locks the door behind him and slides Marner’s key underneath. There’s no going back, no matter how much Isabel might want to return to the one safe, quiet place she’s had in the last several days.
They set a brisk pace toward the hospital, and Isabel’s body warms, but her hands and the end of her nose remain numb and frozen. By the time they’ve crossed the university’s grounds, pale blue daylight has covered the streets, and a sleepy lamplighter in a thick knitted scarf snuffs the street lights one by one.
The university hospital is clean and white in the morning sun, the simple planes of its facade catching the light. Low, flat steps lead up to its front entrance, a pair of oaken doors fitted with brass and flanked by plain, cylindrical columns. It was built centuries later than the temple of Isra, and is its opposite in nearly every way, blank and undecorated. It’s a strange, lonely feeling to enter a house of healing and not see the Mother depicted on every wall. High windows allow in panels of cold light, and the interior is as white as the outside, from the tiled floor to the high ceilings and the sheets hung between patients’ beds in the wide chamber to the right of the doors.
A young man sits at a reception desk, staring listlessly into the middle distance in a way that is all too familiar to Isabel. It’s the look of someone who woke up far too early. Berend asks for Lucian Warder, and after some lethargic shuffling of papers, the young man points down a white hallway to a set of white stairs.
Warder’s room is a private one, and its door is locked and guarded by a night nurse in a starched white uniform. She takes one look at the pair of them, scruffy and wearing borrowed clothes, and says, “Mr. Warder needs rest. You can see him when he wakes up.”
Thanks for reading! I am slowly regaining my ability to breathe normally, which is really helpful for the writing process, and I’m still working on the newest chapter of Journey to the Water.
Space Whales Press 
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